Ball Lightning (BTD6)

"Makes powerful balls of lightning that shoot additional lightning bolts and can freeze Bloons."

- In-game description

Ball Lightning is the 4th upgrade of the 1st path for the Druid. It adds an additional attack for the Druid, allowing it to shoot balls of lightning. These projectiles are slow-moving electric balls that create stronger lightning bolts (stronger than Heart of Thunder lightning bolts) when approaching bloons. The ball itself does no damage but has 25% chance to freeze bloons that touch it, or 100% with "Cold Front" MK, and has virtually infinite pierce. The freezing effect lasts for around ~1.5s and also affects White Bloons and Lead Bloons. Each lightning ball is shot every 6 seconds and the lightning from Ball Lightning spawns every 0.35 seconds dealing 2 damage to up to 30 bloons per lightning. Lightning balls have 43 range for spawning lightning bolts. In the air, the lightning balls last for up to 5 seconds.

In a similar vein to BTD5 Monkey Apprentice's Tempest Tornado, tornadoes from Ball Lightning are upgraded in conjunction with lightning balls. Tornadoes blow back 50 units further, between 150 to 250 units, and blow back up to 60 bloons instead of 30. However, unlike Tempest Tornado, tornadoes continue to deal zero damage to bloons.

It costs $3,825 on Easy, $4,500 on Medium, $4,860 on Hard, and $5,400 on Impoppable.

Appearance
TBA

Statistics
TBA

Damage Types
TBA

Costs

 * Updated as of Version 30.0

Summary
The Ball Lightning allows the Druid to launch a new type of slow-moving projectile alongside previous spells from upgrades Heart of Thunder, Druid of the Storm, and typical Druid thorns. This slow-firing, slow-moving attack is powerful against regular bloons, dealing high amounts of damage while having the chance to freeze bloons. It still works well after the rise of Super Ceramics because of the freeze effects.

The projectile itself fires off Lightning Bolt attacks from itself, attacking bloons close to itself at a quick pace. If no bloons are nearby, it will not release these arcs of lightning. The slow movement, instead of hampering potency, is meant to help maximize the lightning strikes in this case, letting the ball attack multiple times to the same bloons, as well as having the chance to freeze bloons by touching them.

Ball Lightning is usually used in combination with Poplust Druid strategies to help with bloon rounds. However, do note that in many cases, Poplusts themselves already defeat these rounds, especially with pierce buff/Wall of Trees support from Obyn Greenfoot, so it may be better to buy a cheaper variant of Druid, or to simply save the money for your other upgrades.

Tips

 * The slow attack speed of the ball lightning attack means that it can easily miss the large groups of bloons it is meant to target. Poplust boosting the Ball Lightning Druid helps with this by increasing the fire rate of the Ball Lightning attack.
 * Given the nature of the projectile benefiting from being in the range of bloons for a long period of time, using a Ball Lightning Druid similarly to a Juggernaut or Spike-o-pult would be ideal, allowing it to pass down the path and shock as many bloons as many times as possible before disappearing or going off the screen.
 * One notable aspect for Ball Lightning can also be unlocked with Monkey Knowledge Point called "Cold Front", allowing the ball to guarantee freezing bloons it attacks. Because the old freeze is fairly weak due to its low freeze chance, the 100% freeze chance adds a considerably large amount of stalling power for the Ball Lightning.

Trivia

 * Ball Lightning did not follow the trend of the older Monkey Apprentice, which would typically be that stronger whirlwinds are made with the Tempest Tornado upgrade. This was partially amended since Version 30.0, adding stronger blowback and packing twice the pierce, though tornadoes are still the same size and do not directly damage blown back bloons.
 * All Ball Lightning Druids stand on a dark grey platform with four glowing purple lights on each side 90 degrees apart.