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• Diamondback has multiple segments and regularly spits Bloons forwards on the track. • Diamondback's head blocks projectiles from piercing through to its body. • The Rattle Tail is shielded from damage, break through the shield to stun and debuff Diamondback temporarily! • Diamondback releases Diamond Bloons that only take 1 damage at a time. • When each skull is reached, Diamondback sheds a middle segment, spawns many Bloons and regenerates the Rattle Tail shield.
This boss is composed of multiple segments, with a head that blocks all piercing attacks and a shielded tail that, if it takes enough damage, can stun and debuff the Boss. It is able to spawn large numbers of supplementary Bloons as it loses health. Every time it reaches a skull threshold, Diamondback will shed one body segment in order to spawn an especially large wave of more powerful Bloons, and regrow the shield protecting its tail.
Diamondback consists of multiple segments in a row: a head segment, a tail segment, and 5 body segments (7 body segments for Elite Diamondback). Each segment behaves as a separate Bloon and can take damage, but they all share a single health bar. Projectiles have their pierce reduced to 0 if they hit Diamondback's head segment, or reduced by 2 if they hit a body segment.
Rattle Tail
Diamondback's tail segment is protected by a shield with Fortified properties, represented by a secondary brown bar beneath its health bar. The health of the shield is always equal to 12.5% of Diamondback's maximum health for the current tier, including the extra health from co-op. When the Rattle Tail shield is destroyed, Diamondback becomes stunned for 12 seconds, and all segments take doubled damage from all attacks until the shield regenerates. While the Rattle Tail shield is disabled, the zig-zagging lines on Diamondback's health bar will turn dull, its segments will visually crack apart, and the tail's health bar will turn bright blue and display "Vulnerable" text.
Scattered Bloons
Each time Diamondback loses 1% of its health, its head segment and all of its body segments spawn a certain number of Bloons all over the track. The number and types of Bloons they spawn depends on Diamondback's tier and whether it is in Normal or Elite mode. These Bloons are briefly immune to damage upon spawning. Since each segment spawns its own Bloons, the number of Bloons spawned diminishes as Diamondback loses its segments.
Skulls
Upon reaching a skull, Diamondback loses one of its body segments, fully regenerates the Rattle Tail's shield, and spawns more Bloons all over the track from its head and body segments. It uses the same mechanics as its normal Bloon spawns, but with different Bloon types, which always include a number of Diamond Bloons. Diamondback becomes untargetable by attacks for 3 seconds after reaching a skull.
A single attack cannot damage past a skull; for example if an attack normally deals 4,500 damage and Diamondback has only 1,000 health remaining to the next skull, that attack deals only 1,000 damage.
Boss Rush
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Diamondback is a boss that rewards planned positioning of towers with high pierce to take the greatest advantage of its body segments each independently taking damage. While damaging multiple segments at once allows high-pierce towers to do immense damage to the boss, the head deletes all projectiles that touch it, rendering head-on attacks highly ineffective. Towers are best positioned in locations where they can attack from the sides or back of the boss, or at parts of the map where Diamondback's segments will tightly bunch up or coil, maximizing the amount of segments a single projectile can hit at once. Because of the boss' multiple segments, normally unstackable damage-over-time effects have increased effectiveness, with Sticky Bomb/Master Bomber in particular being able to attach multiple simultaneous bombs to the boss and deal major damage.
Ironically, the best way to approach the Rattle Tail is to simply not engage with it at all, as its high health and full regeneration at each skull makes it hard to destroy without dealing enough collateral damage to other segments to reach the next skull threshold. In addition, the debuff will usually lead to the next skull being reached near-instantly because of the massive damage amplification, immediately regrowing the tail and causing the debuff to wear off, making the benefits short-lived and usually unnecessary compared to attacking the normal segments with piercing attacks. The importance of damaging the tail may increase during events where Boss HP or Boss Speed is increased, as the damage multiplier and fairly lengthy stun (the latter of which persists for the full duration even if Diamondback hits the next skull threshold) respectively can provide a more significant advantage.
The greatest threat, particularly in early tiers, are the Diamond Bloons scattered by Diamondback at skull thresholds. As they require 100 hits to destroy instead of raw damage, are immune to all impairing effects, incur massive life loss when leaking, and release a Fortified Ceramic even when popped, very few early defenses are capable of handling them, with recommended ones including Alchemists, top-path Glue Gunners, and Overdrive/The Tack Zone. While Diamond Bloons are less of a threat in the later tiers, one must still keep a backup defense if the defense chosen to attack Diamondback relies on slow, powerful hits, such as the M.A.D or Ballistic Obliteration Missile Bunker.
Gallery
Screenshots
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Diamondback's name is a reference to diamondback rattlesnakes and is visually inspired by the feathered serpent deities from Mesoamerican religions, with its head resembling the stone carved heads located at the Temple of the Feathered Serpent in the archeological site of Teotihuacan in Mexico.
Ninja Kiwi has stated that the boss is inspired by an enemy from Bloons Supermonkey 2.[1] Although not officially stated, this enemy is highly likely to be the Worm.
References
↑ 1.01.1"Diamondback, the new and terrifying multi-segment Boss Bloon * This boss will be exclusive to Frontier at launch, but we will be adapting it for inclusion in the base game next year * We’re sure players will work out all there is to know but we will share that it is a conglomerate boss inspired by Bloons Super Monkey 2 * Core mechanics revolve around Pierce and deliberate attacks that cause the boss to debuff itself" – Ninja Kiwi (Fri, 28 Nov 2025). "Bloons TD 6 v52.0 - Update Preview!". Reddit. Retrieved Fri, 28 Nov 2025.
Diamondback
Elite Diamondback
Diamondback (defeated)
Elite Diamondback (defeated)
Event icon
Diamondback menu icon
Elite Diamondback menu icon
Diamondback medal
Elite Diamondback medal
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