The Problem With Paragons

Models, the strongest monkeys in the universe, created from the slaughter of entire monkey villages, are what every casual player aspires to build. But could they be bad for BTD6? Well, let's find out.  Paragons was first released on Update27.png alongside Bloonarius. It was clear that the new Apex   Plasma Master and Glaive Dominus were created to help us beat bosses, but there was a clear

problem

that most people saw right away. The Dart model was much better than the boomerang in terms of damage, price and ease of obtaining it to a high degree, since the knowledge of the monkey allows us to take down 1 additional crossbow master.

All of this added up to making the APM a staple of boss events and the glaive dominus an afterthought. Fast forward to the next update where the Ascended Shadow was added to the game and took his paragon powers to the next level. This guy had incredible damage between his continuous stream of shurikens and huge sticky bombs, plus he had incredible utility by having a 50% passive slow. This instantly made him a favorite for defeating bosses, especially with the new addition of Lych, but his incredible 600k price tag and inability to get easy titles made him almost exclusively a late-game option.  So, the goal was clear.

Get a Dart Paragon for level 3 and 4 boss events and defeat level 5 with a super high level Ascended Shadow and a VTSG. Once again, Glaive Dominus was pushed aside because he didn't really fit the meta even though Ninja Kiwi doubled or even tripled some of his stats in this update. With these upgrades, you couldn't argue that he was a great boss option, he just couldn't compete with early APM or late Ascended Shadow, so he was stuck in limbo. This is totally fine. There are many cases in bloons and other games where a tower is good but isn't used because it simply doesn't fit the meta.

But update 29 is where we get into the crux of the model's

problem

.  In it, Glaive Dominus got 3 more damage buffs, so it deals more damage than the APM pound for pound. But that's not the problem. The thing is that getting a grade 30 Glaive Dominus around 80 is much more difficult and expensive than a grade 30 Apex Plasma Master. And this difference in price and difficulty more than makes up for the difference in damage, especially when you consider optimizing money for bosses. But even more problematic than trying to solve this delicate problem with brute force damage upgrades is overshadowing it with the strongest tower we've ever seen.

Yes, this update added the Navarca of the Seas, which put all the other models to shame. It had global fighter jets, 6 sets of turrets, grappling hooks that automatically fired ZOMG and less, it was the first model to get an ability that just happened to let it fire BAD that everyone thought was off limits, but more on that more late, and most importantly, it is now the second model that has a super easy way to reach a high level. Boat farming, already the fastest way to farm in the game, now counts every dollar generated by a boat as 4 pops, which is the main limiting factor on Paragon grades, aside from how many Tier 5s you can sacrifice.  So now we have the clear path to beat all the bosses, you just had to farm by ship, get a super cheap grade 30 Dart Paragon for a round of 80, get a massive grade 50+ Navarch of the Seas for a round of 100, and then, and Only then would we think about getting the Glaive Dominus or the Ascended Shadow, which you would only do if you had enough money left over.

Fortunately, this was altered if the map had little or no water, but then we went back to updating 28 strategies.  So what is the problem? Well, we have 4 models, but 2 of them are clear standout favorites that are essentially necessary to beat the elite bosses, you get them first when you do a free play run, and the only time you get the other 2 models is if you have extra. money and time to do them.  Ninja Kiwi has recognized this and has been forcing players to opt for other models for a while now by choosing certain maps or limiting the monkeys we can use as bosses.

While this is effective and typically praised by players, it is clearly a band-aid solution rather than a complete solution.  So how does Ninja Kiwi fix this? Well, we have already explained that this is a meta problem and not so much a DPS problem. Therefore, in order to compete with the current top models, the new ones will need an easy way to get high titles and make them worth the price in key rounds like 80, 100 or 120. If this can't happen, the meta We have to change either with new bosses that counter certain models or nerfs to APM and Navarch, making it more difficult to obtain additional titles.

This could have solved all our problems, but then the Master Builder was added in This engineer model is the most expensive. yet, but he has 2 things going for him. The first is that you can get some extra titles with his XXXL trap generating money and getting pops. And the second is that if you are farming super efficiently, you will have many overclock engineers to improve your BRF; so you already have your sacrifices ready when the time comes to make the Master Builder.  In this way, the necessary metrics were achieved to be a useful model. You have a way to get additional titles, but it's not as effective as the extra level 5 that the APM gets or the ship farming that the Navarch gets.

That being said, the extra number of units is always welcome as its price makes it an option for around 100 or 120.  This is where you look exclusively for damage and check that box as well. So now the Master Builder is competing with Glaive Dominus and Ascended Shadow for that third spot. But the addition of the Master Builder brought a new problem to the front of every player's mind. The Master Builder does not combine the 3 paths of the engineer like the previous 4 models did with their respective monkeys. All he has are the top lane mega sentinels and he gets ultra boosted every round.

Now, I don't think this is too big of a problem, but the community has spoken and even Ninja Kiwi stated that it's strange that the first stand model doesn't improve other towers in some way. So I'm hoping they change it, but it brings up something I find much, much scarier. And that's the power boost that's crept into bloons and that even players are expecting right now.  Now, Ninja Kiwi is actively fighting the power increase and I'm making a whole video about it, but in short, the incredible amount of power that Navarch and Apex Plasma Master have has conditioned many people to expect that from new models.

And when that doesn't hold true, there's frustration and disappointment, even though the new models are meant to be hype machines.  So, let's say the Master Builder is modified to have a MEGA Trap. What are you doing? You'd be surprised how many comments I've gotten about how I should be able to eat BADLY like Navarca does, but I think that should be completely banned even for models, but if it has to exist, it better be. locked behind a model skill with an incredibly long cooldown.  So how would you fix all these problems? Well, first let me say that I think Ninja Kiwi is being careful and doing the right thing, so this should be resolved soon, but I would start with what I said before: making it much harder to get high grade APMs and Navarcas. .

This will instantly level the playing field for all five existing models. I would then make it clear whether the models will be exclusively DPS machines or a culmination of their three paths in the future. And if a rework is done for Master Builder, it would give it a lot more support. I probably wouldn't let it overclock other models, but it would give it an ultra-boosting aura for normal monkeys and do something unique with the trap. There is absolutely no way I am going to allow you to eat BAD foods. Instead, I would make the trap similar to Geraldo's totems in that the next model created would also sacrifice the trap and count pops and money when calculating levels.

In this way, the master builder helps create better models without the need to overclock them directly. This would be a good combination of all his paths, staying true to the support and hopefully making all models viable.