User:DesArch/BATTD Strategy Optimization
So before I get started with my character breakdowns, there are some things that should probably be addressed, as I will reuse many of these findings throughout my posts.
Firstly, PerishShit, a prominent redditor, created multiple detailed breakdowns. While I will likely reference them, I will also do my own findings just so I can make sure that he got the assumptions right. Some characters I will do writeups about also lack a post from him, but other characters he has covered will also be covered by me, as I may cover alternative builds or have different findings from him.
Another thing is his array of buffs that he uses. While he did dismiss The Lover in one of his posts, he neglected another argument in favor of The Lover/DMB. [1] The Lover/DMB should buff Tech Terrors, a huge source of damage in late game MG, so a strategy using those would see major benefit from damage bonuses. Speed Cap is generally irrelevant as an argument in favor of Lover/DMB as most characters struggle to reach it, and the ones that speed cap typically receive minimal benefit from it. Other buffs he did not include are Rock Out!'s global +20% speed buff (on a cooldown), Warning Horn's local 20% speed buff, and Scented Candles' local 10% speed buff. With Baby Tooth and Monkey Stim, Rock Out will have a cooldown of 36 seconds, if Cosmic Gauntlets is added it will have a cooldown of 32.4 seconds. This means that for a large portion of the time, Rock Out can be active, and Warning Horn can be equipped on both Tuxedo Jake and Supermonkey for buffing other towers with Horn, as Horn has full uptime with Stim and when equipped on two characters, they have very large range, and they don't suffer much of a loss from running Horn.
Note that Fame's supposed speed buff is actually provided by Rock Out! baseline, so because of the immense lag Catchy Tunes creates, I do not recommend running that path. The speed cap in my testing is 60 attacks per second, and speed is rounded up in terms of frames per second, so a character slightly above 30 attacks per second will attack at 60 attacks per second.
Like PerishShit I will probably also exclude trinkets that add an attack unless a character has an exceptional interaction with them. Namely, Water Scarf for Commander Cassie and Sam, Carl the Gem for C4?, and Missile for Finn. This is because of the immense lag that they can create that can end up bricking a run. For most characters, slotting in Missile can be useful, and I will likely mention what slot can you replace with Missile, but if a character is designed in a way where I would not recommend Missile then I will mention it.