Super Brittle

"Bloons take huge damage while frozen including MOAB-class Bloons."

- In-game Description

Super Brittle is the fifth and final upgrade of Path 1 for the Ice Monkey in Bloons TD 6.

It can affect any bloon type, including White Bloons, and Zebra Bloons, and attacks about 11% faster than Embrittlement. Any bloon damaged by Super Brittle takes +4 damage for 3 seconds and for the same duration, the bloon(s) become vulnerable to attacks that normally cannot pop frozen or lead (DDTs included). MOAB-class Bloons are not frozen in place, but are permanently slowed down by 25% (via the Permafrost effect to MOAB-class, excluding BADs and Bosses). It will deal 1 damage by default but deals 5 damage to any bloon if it hits the same bloon consecutively.

It costs $23,800 on Easy, $28,000 on Medium, $30,240 on Hard, and $33,600 on Impoppable.

Appearance
TBA

Costs

 * Updated as of Version 29.4

Summary
Despite its tiny range, Super Brittle is extremely effective in combination with high-DPS towers, specifically fast-attacking, high-projectile towers or spike-based towers. In combination with the permanent slowdown via Permafrost effects, the temporary debuff towards regular bloons and MOAB-class bloons can prove super effective at demolishing them, although the Super Brittle itself has rather low pierce for its price. Super Brittle benefits much from the range bonuses from Primary Mentoring, which is much needed when unsupported due to its very limited DPS.

Tips

 * Although the Ice Monkey becomes a massive support tower with this upgrade, it is important to note that it still has a really small radius, so placement is vital.
 * It is best to place it around a hairpin bend, and planning in advance is almost always required. Note that the Ice Monkey's range does not have to directly encompass the track itself in order to attack and debuff blimps along the path.
 * Due to the fact that it is considered a Primary Monkey, it can be buffed by Primary Training, Primary Mentoring and Primary Expertise to improve its small range.
 * As its damage boost is additive rather than multiplicative, fast-firing towers and spike-related attacks benefit hugely. Super Monkeys are a classic example of towers that attack quickly. Towers that fire multiple projectiles also benefit from this, such as Airburst Dart Monkey Subs, Bloonjitsu Ninjas, Overdrive Tack Shooters, or Grape Shot Buccaneers with Double Shot. Spike-related attacks, such as Spike Factory spikes and Caltrops, benefit as well, especially Spike Storms.
 * The towers that benefit the absolute most are Grandmaster Ninja, Sun Avatar, Comanche Commander and Tack Zone
 * While Avatar of Wrath barely benefits from Super Brittle's debuffs, the Poplust Druids supporting it will be greatly strengthened
 * It is recommended to purchase a 5-2-0 Ice Monkey rather than a 5-0-2 as the monkey's fire rate is still slow.
 * Re-Freeze actually works at refreshing the brittling debuff with full uptime as long as it is hitting the same bloon, as its attack speed is still faster than the duration of the status effect.
 * As there is currently no visual indicator for blimps affected by the Super Brittle debuff, a working debuff is indicated through either seeing affected blimp(s) degrading quickly visually or by seeing a quick increase in damage count for the tower with the highest attack speed and/or projectile count.
 * Super Brittle can cause affected DDTs to become damaged from attacks that normally cannot pop lead. Therefore, a sharp attack such as Avatar of Wrath's thorns or an energy attack such as Laser Cannon's lasers can damage DDTs affected by Super Brittle's debuffs. However, explosion type attacks still cannot damage DDTs even when the DDTs are hit by Super Brittle, as the DDTs still retain their black properties.
 * This has allowed the 2TC combo Super Brittle + Bloon Exclusion Zone to become possible.

Bugs
Bug Reports
 * [25.0] As a result of a set of reworks of the damage types of various towers on the Version 25.0 update, there was a bug present where Super Brittle's debuff doesn't work.

Bug Fixes
 * [25.1] The bug concerning the debuff not working has been fixed.

Trivia

 * As of Version 7.0, this upgrade has the smallest range out of any Tier 5 upgrade, excluding all towers whose "range" is represented for inclusion purposes (of which are Sniper Monkey, Heli Pilot, Monkey Ace, Mortar Monkey, and Dartling Gunner).
 * Absolute Zero used to also have the smallest range, but since Version 7.0 Absolute Zero now has twice the range of a normal Ice Monkey.
 * Even with the Version 17.0 buffs to its range, Super Brittle remains the smallest range out of any Tier 5 without "dummy" range.
 * The second-smallest goes to The Tack Zone, at 30 range, compared to Super Brittle's 25 range.
 * The upgrade icon for Super Brittle is displayed as shattered MOAB.
 * The design of the Super Brittle monkey is likely inspired by the design of Yeti in Team Fortress 2 as seen in the official Jungle Inferno update trailer.
 * The current upgrade description is ambiguous. More specifically, if the description was interpreted such that it implied that Super Brittle could apply a freeze status effect, MOAB-class bloons can be targeted and permanently slowed by the Permafrost effect but not be "frozen" quote-on-quote. However, this could just be due to the word "frozen" being the past participle of the word "freeze" and the act of attacking a blimp with its freeze blast attack referred as "freezing".
 * Embrittlement starting from Version 29.0 also uses the word "frozen" in that sense too.
 * The in-game model's metallic head decoration is slightly different from the artwork, being kite-shaped instead of diamond-shaped.