Ninja Monkey (BTD6)

"Stealthy and fast Monkey that throws bladed shurikens to pop the Bloons. Can target Camo Bloons."

- In-game Description

The Ninja Monkey is a Magic-class tower that was released in the initial release of Bloons TD 6. The tower retains its name and role from the Bloons TD 5 generation, with significant additions. It did not receive any teasers prior to release, but it was first shown when the game was available to select YouTubers several days before BTD6's official release date.

Ninja Monkey attacks at a moderately fast speed, throwing a shuriken every 0.70s. Ninjas deal 1 damage and hit up to 2 bloons per shuriken. It has a moderate range of 40. Ninja Monkey is one of two towers in BTD6 to detect camo by default, the other being Spike Factory, but the only to receive the Camo Prioritization target option by default. Many of its upgrades are powerful as supportive and offensive options, including shurikens that seek, buffing attack speed and pierce of nearby Ninjas, deadly sticky bombs, and immediate slowdown of all bloons on screen. (Except BADs, as they are immune to all slows.)

It costs $425 on Easy, $500 on Medium, $540 on Hard, and $600 on Impoppable.

Description
The Ninja Monkey is a monkey with a red jumpsuit revealing only its hands, feet, and eyes, along with a white ninja belt. On its official portrait, it holds a dark grey shuriken with its right hand, and appears to be in a prepared pose for throwing the shuriken, with a crouching stance, a focused glare, and a shuriken prepared to be thrown. When dropped on the screen, the Ninja will do a three-point landing pose with its right hand and both feet. When idle, the Ninja Monkey occasionally bows or looks around both sides.

Path 1 increases the amount of shurikens the ninja monkey can throw. This is the standard Ninja Monkey path and has remained mostly unchanged from BTD5. This path focuses on throwing out large numbers of shurikens for bloon and MOAB damage.

Path 2 turns the Ninja Monkey into a support tower. This is through his new abilities to confuse bloons, reveal camos, speed up other Ninja Monkeys and to slow bloons.

Path 3 turns the Ninja Monkey into a MOAB killer. This is through the tier 4 upgrade Sticky Bomb. The previous upgrades are just generally helpful abilites such as caltrops and flash bombs.

Target Priorities
The base Ninja Monkey uses the standard target priorities: First, Last, Close, Strong. Most its attacks are dependent on its given target priority.

Most of its alternate attacks have different target priorities:
 * Caltrops always targets sporadically in a similar way to a base Spike Factory's Normal targeting.
 * Shinobi Tactics is a range-based buff, and targets only Ninja Monkeys.
 * Bloon Sabotage targets all bloons on screen instantaneously and all incoming bloons.
 * Grand Saboteur targets bloons similarly to Bloon Sabotage, but its unique blimp health percentage reduction only targets incoming blimps.
 * All attacks from Flash Bomb, Sticky Bomb, and Master Bomber target based on the Ninja's own target priority. Sticky Bomb's sticky bombs have slightly more range, and Master Bomber's sticky bombs have infinite range, excluding Line of Sight restrictions.

Ninja Monkey is unique in that it comes with the Camo Prioritization target option, a separate option that allows it to target Camo Bloons before all others, and if multiple Camo Bloons are on screen, it will attack the first, last, closest, or strongest, depending on the main targeting.

Total Cost
Note: these numbers refer to Medium Difficulty.

Building the Ascended Shadow
To effectively reach the necessary Pop Count, utilising the x/3/x Shinobi Buff on Master Bomber and Grandmaster Ninja is vital. With Maxed Shinobis both T5s can achieve similar pop counts throughout the rounds. With this in mind we can include the 20x 2/4/0 Bloon Sabotage Ninjas into the 100 Upgrade and $250,000 requirements. The top and bottom crosspaths have identical costs so we can always take the more preferable range upgrade from Top Path to help the Shinobis reach the carries.

0/2/4 Sticky Bomb is the most expensive crosspath, with 2/0/4 lagging only slightly behind. These are the most preferable to complete the cost requirement, as they also benefit from Shinobis to help deal with waves until the Paragon is complete. Alternatively 2/4/0 Bloon Sabotages can be built exclusively since the Active Ability can help with counting the number of ninjas placed.

Co-op
Playing with other players opens the potential for Multiple extra T5s to be fed to the Paragon. These fully contribute to the Upgrade Count and Cost requirements. Calculating the remaining values on Easy shows the Maximum amount to be spent.

Without Crosspaths the 5/0/0 Grandmaster Ninja, 0/5/0 Grand Saboteur, and 0/0/5 Master Bomber total at $150,095. This leaves $99,905 to be spent. 20 2/4/0 Bloon Sabotages cost $137,600 which more than makes up the difference. Together they more than make up the necesssary Upgrade Count requirement.

Thus, on all difficulties the requirements can be more than fulfilled by building the following:


 * 2-Player: 3 Extra T5s + 20 2/4/0 Bloon Sabotages
 * 3-Player + : 6/9 Extra T5s + 20 x/3/x Shinobi Tactics

Monkey Knowledge
This section displays Monkey Knowledge that has effects on Ninja Monkey and its changes when compared to one by default:
 * LingeringMagicIcon.png Lingering Magic: Projectiles fired from all Magic Monkeys (except Alchemists) have longer lifespan.
 * Projectiles last 20% longer, from x seconds → x seconds.
 * CheaperDoublesIcon.png Cheaper Doubles: Ninja Double Shot cost reduced by 100.
 * Cost reduced from $720, $850, $920, $1,020 to $620, $750, $820, $920 on each difficulty.
 * HotMagicIcon.png Hot Magic: All Magic type towers can pop Frozen Bloons.
 * DiversionTacticsIcon.png Diversion Tactics: Increased chance to distract Bloons from Distraction upgrade.
 * Increases chance of Distraction effect occurring by an additional 5%, to a total of 20%.
 * DeadlyTranquilityIcon.png Deadly Tranquility: Bloonjitsu and Grandmaster Ninja get an extra shuriken per throw.
 * Increases Bloonjitsu shuriken count from 5 to 6.
 * Increases Grandmaster Ninja shuriken count from 8 to 9.
 * MonkeyEducationIcon.png Monkey Education: All Monkeys XP earn rate increased by 8%.
 * BetterSellDealsIcon.png Better Sell Deals: All Monkeys sell for 5% more.
 * Increases sell potency from 70% to 75%.
 * VeteranMonkeyTrainingIcon.png Veteran Monkey Training: All Monkeys reload time reduced by 3%.
 * GlobalAbilityCooldownsIcon.png Global Ability Cooldowns: All Ability cooldowns for all Monkeys reduced by 3%.

Videos
TBA

Trivia

 * Ninja Monkey is one out of the two non-hero towers in the game to pop Camo Bloons without any upgrades, the other being the Spike Factory.
 * The Ninja Monkey is one of the four monkeys with a Paragon tier upgrade currently in the game.
 * According to Ninja Kiwi's October 29th 2021 blog, the favorite pasttime of Ninja Monkeys is writing haikus.