The Wizard Monkey is considered to be the most basic of the Magic Monkeys, though the reality is that Wizard Monkeys are exceptionally powerful and can help players completely obliterate hoards of waves using any of it’s upgrade paths.
The Wizard Monkey is unlike any of it’s previous versions as it has ultimately been split into two different Monkeys, the Wizard Monkey itself as well as the Druid Monkey.
The Wizard Monkey has, however, gained many more powerful attacks that has helped streamline the Wizard Monkey in order to make it much more damage oriented instead of being both damage heavy with bouts of support.
The Wizard Monkey will always deal energy based damage, though it has the capability of summoning fire, explosions or can even be upgraded in order to reanimate dead bloons in order to deal extra damage to all bloons.
The Wizard Monkey is by far one of the Towers I always love placing as it can be used in most situations and will provide the player support in almost all circ*mstances.
The best aspect, in my opinion, is simply how much range all the Wizard Monkeys have as all upgrades can essentially provide the Wizard Monkey global damage, especially in comparison to other towers.
The following guide will take you through everything you need to know about the Wizard Monkey as well as strategies on when to place each different type of upgrade path.
PATH 1 TIER-5 WIZARD MONKEY – ARCHMAGE
The Archmage is a pretty standard Wizard Monkey, relying on the tower’s main energy attack for all of it’s damage.
Archmages attack twice as fast as it’s previous tier, though they have all the different types of attacks a Wizard Monkey can obtain, minus re-animating dead bloons.
An Archmage will attack every 0.1375 seconds with it’s bolt, 0.1 seconds with it’s flame and will reveal Camo bloons with Shimmer every 2.5 seconds.
Players will be able to attack using their bolt to a total of 11 bloons dealing 7 damage to normal bloons and 24 MOAB-class bloons.
The Dragon Breath attack, will pop 1 layer of each bloon every 1.5 seconds for 3 seconds.
Shockingly the Shimmer caused by the Archmage has a larger radius than the actual upgrade, being 90.
The Archmage is most useful when used against MOAB-class bloons, especially when they are clumped up.
When it comes to cross pathing a tier-5 Archmage, players can essentially use both upgrade paths.
Path 2 will provide players access to using Fireball and Wall of FIre which are not actually accessible with a non-cross pathed Archmage.
The Fireball and Wall of Fire are much stronger when cross pathed in tandem with Path 1, essentially having more pierce and being able to wipe out MOAB-class bloons and hoards of lower-tiered bloons with great ease.
Though a cross path with Path 2 is powerful, players are often recommended a cross path with Path 3 as this will provide the Archmage with Camo detection, making them extremely reliable for dealing with DDTs.
The Path 1 Archmage is by far one of the strongest towers in the game, especially because it ignores Line of Sight and has a tremendous range in comparison to other towers.
PATH 2 TIER-5 WIZARD MONKEY – WIZARD LORD PHOENIX
A lesser used tower in the mix is the Wizard Lord Phoenix, focussing on fire damage and providing the player with a permanent Phoenix from the previous Summon Phoenix upgrade.
The Wizard Lord Phoenix has 50 pierce, essentially making it fairly unstoppable, especially in tandem with the Phoenix that remains summoned.
The Wizard Lord will gain an increase in damage while using Fireball, bringing it up to 9 damage and will also receive an increase in damage for Dragon’s Breath, bringing it up to 2.
The Wizard Lord Phoenix gains it’s own special ability that causes the Wizard Monkey to transform and deal more damage than the Phoenix upgrade, shooting in all directions and dealing more damage to bloons than it’s previous tier.
The thing players need to keep in mind is that when player activate the Wizard Phoenix Lord ability, the Wizard Phoenix Lord will transform into a phoenix, essentially removing the base tower and allowing two Phoenixes to fly.
The Wizard Lord Phoenix will remain in it’s Phoenix form for 20 seconds and will have a 50 second cooldown.
When it comes to cross pathing a Wizard Lord Phoenix, either cross path is fine as neither of them actually affect the special ability.
The Path 1 cross path is more common for players to use as it will increase the base tower’s pierce to 50 making it easier for players to shred through lower tier bloons as long as they do not have Camo properties.
Players who upgrade using Path 3 will mostly be doing it in order to gain Camo detection, though this can easily be done by placing a Monkey Village with Radar Scanner (-/2/-) or a Hero like Etienne.
To be honest, a Wizard Lord Monkey doesn’t really need Camo detection as it’s ability actually provides the tower with Camo detection.
The Wizard Lord Phoenix is quite a powerful tower, however I would consider it to be more of a support tower that’s good for “oh sh*t!” situations rather than being a primary damage tower.
My main reason for having this belief is that players must rely on its special ability if they want to deal the most damage.
PATH 3 TIER-5 WIZARD MONKEY – PRINCE OF DARKNESS
At first I didn’t think that the Prince of Darkness was that powerful, but my thoughts on that have changed rapidly, making the Prince of Darkness one of my favourite Towers to place on most maps of Bloons TD 6.
The Prince of Darkness will reanimate dead bloons, collecting 3,000 bloon souls in order to re-summon them and essentially damage other bloons.
The more bloons souls the Prince of Darkness collects, the more damage the re-animated bloons will deal.
UNDEAD BLOON DAMAGE
The following is all the damage Undead Bloons will cause based on how many bloon souls are stored.
300 Bloons Stored
3 damage to bloons with a spray of 1-4
301-600 Bloons Stored
4 damage to bloons with a spray of 1-4
601-900Bloons Stored
5 damage to bloons with a spray of 1-4
901-1,200 Bloons Stored
6 damage to bloons with a spray of 1-4
1,201-1,500 Bloons Stored
7 damage to bloons with a spray of 1-4
1,501-1,800 Bloons Stored
8 damage to bloons with a spray of 1-4
1,801-2,100 Bloons Stored
9 damage to bloons with a spray of 1-4
2,101-2,400 Bloons Stored
10 damage to bloons with a spray of 1-4
2,401-2,700 Bloons Stored
11 damage to bloons with a spray of 1-4
2700 Bloons Stored & Above
12 damage to bloons with a spray of 1-4
UNDEAD BLIMP DAMAGE
The following is all the damage Undead Blimps will cause based on how many bloon souls are stored.
1,999 Bloons Stored & Below (Undead MOAB-class bloon)
40 damage to bloons
2,000 Bloons Stored & Above (Undead MOAB-class bloon)
50 damage to bloons
Undead BFB
Always 100 damage
Re-animated bloons will survive for 50% longer and will deal more damage based on how many bloon souls are collected, meaning that bloons will actually survive for 15 seconds instead of 10.
Bloons will pierce between 2-11 bloons before expiring, though undead MOAB-class bloons will pierce through 2 and undead BFBs will pierce through 50.
It should be noted that Undead MOAB-class bloons will consume 20 souls and can be spawned every 3 seconds and Undead BFBs will consume 50 souls being able to spawn every 3 seconds only when a Prince of Darkness has over 1,450 bloons stored.
The other nice thing about The Prince of Darkness is that its main attack will deal damage 4x faster than the base tower.
Players will also benefit from the massive range increase the Prince of Darkness has in comparison to all other towers.
The Prince of Darkness retains it’s Shimmer attack, now revealing bloons at a much quicker pace.
When it comes to cross pathing a Prince of Darkness players should make the decision based on what kind of map they are dealing with.
If players are on a map that has obstructions to their Line of Sight players should use Path 1 as Path 1 will remove all obstructions from the Prince of Darkness allowing it to summon bloons further back and essentially damage more bloons.
If players are looking for more damage they should think about a Path 2 cross path as doing such will raise the chance of dealing damage to more bloons due to the Wall of Fire.
Unlike the Necromancer: Unpopped Army upgrade, players will not need to place the Prince of Darkness close to the entrance to make use of the re-animated bloons simply because of the amount of range and damage it has. Players instead can place this tower in the centre of a map or closer to the end to provide support to all other towers.
CONCLUSION
When it comes to selecting what Wizard Monkey players will want to use it will highly depend on what map the player is on.
In many cases players will want to have a Path 3 Prince of Darkness as it will provide players with the most support in comparison to other types of Towers.
Prince of Darkness provides the most support when dealing with MOAB-class bloons, especially DDTs.
Players will want to use a Path 1 if there is a good amount of map coverage it can take, especially if a path loops around.
By far the Path 1 Archmage can deal the most damage, especially if players are able to damage bloons rapidly, multiple times.
Archmages are phenomenal at dealing damage to MOAB-class bloons, though on short maps or maps where they only have a short amount of attack time as this will greatly reduce the amount of damage the Archmage can output.
For players who are on maps that don’t have a whole lot of attack area, I strongly recommend placing a Path 2 Wizard Lord Phoenix. Reason being? Not only will it deal a good amount of damage using it’s Wall of Fire, especially in a controlled area, players will be able to activate the ability to deal global damage.
The Wizard Lord Phoenix deals a good amount of damage without it’s ability though as it will always have a Phoenix flying dealing good damage to bloons that are making their way down the path.
The main reason I don’t use the Wizard Lord Phoenix often is that it does not have very much potential shredding through MOAB-class bloons in comparison to the other upgrades.
So I’m curious, what’s your favourite path of Wizard Monkey?
Do you love Path 1 or do you always place a Path 3 Wizard Monkey like I do?
Are you the biggest fan of Path 2 and do I have things wrong?
Let me know in the comments below!
