The thing about Zebra Bloon is that 8 cost is a huge buff for it in terms of Bloontonium gain and the basic structure of it being a really good support Bloon for control. Control loves having high Bloontonium generation / high card draw cards that make huge value in one deck slot. You might be saying, 'Well, why does it have to be 8 cost for this? Seven cost means it's even cheaper, and cheaper is better, right?' Well, not really with Zebra. The thing about these cards is that, because they're so expensive already, 7 is not cheap by any means for a card like this. Seven is still expensive for a card like Zebra. The higher cost doesn't really matter as much in comparison to what 8 Bloontonium actually gives you.
8 Bloontonium gives you stuff like Obyn's shield in one Bloon. 8 Bloontonium gives you stuff like Mountain Obyn Dire Wolves, with two Black Bloons or two Extra Shot Bloons, for a clean 18. That also applies to Gwen. Two Zebra Bloons at 8 give you a sacrifice with Adora without having to run another card that actually gives you Bloontonium [...] All these Bloontonium interactions are very powerful and make Zebra Bloon even better, even though on paper, this looks like a really harsh and flat nerf. It was so good, in fact, that in testing, this did not get the health decrease at first, but it would just completely outclass every single other card draw option in the entire game for these lategame Heroes. There was pretty much no reason to run Black Bloon, or White Bloon, or any other card draw when you could just run Zebra for all the Bloontonium you'd ever need with its incredible card draw, so its health was reduced from 180 to 150 to make it less good at pressuring the opponent.
Now, Black Bloons, although they draw a little less hard and they don't give you as much Bloontonium, they still pressure the opponent more than something like Zebra does with its 150 health, and if you've played this game since launch, Zebra's stats actually mirror the exact same stats they had at launch, which is kind of a funny coincidence. If
— u/No-Appearance1780's commentary, 21:54–24:02 (with most disfluencies removed)
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7
Now draws a card when any other Bloon leaks, in addition to itself (bug)
Zebra Bloon no longer draws cards when another Bloon leaks (bug fix)
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