Burny Stuff (BTD6)

"Damaged Bloons are set ablaze momentarily with each hit."

- In-game description

Burny Stuff is the second upgrade of Path 3 for the Mortar Monkey in Bloons TD 6. All bloons damaged by the Mortar Monkey with Burny Stuff will be set on fire, dealing 1 damage every 1.25s for 3.75 seconds, for a total of 3 damage. Unlike BTD5, the Mortar Monkey cannot apply napalm to Black Bloons or Zebra Bloons unless the Mortar can damage them (e.g. upgrading to Heavy Shells, adding MIB, or having Striker Jones Level 5+).

Burny Stuff improves its napalm damage-over-time with Path 1 crosspathing. Starting from 3-0-2, burning effects are twice as fast but last twice as short, damaging at a rate of every 0.675s over 1.875s. Burn damage also increases to 2 with Shell Shock (6 total damage), 5 with The Big One (15 total damage), and 25 with The Biggest One (75 total damage). Duration of the Burny Stuff's status effect and the rate of damage ticks both remain otherwise the same with crosspathing, but damage ticks rate increases by 0.25s by having Extra Burny Stuff.

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

Appearance
Upgrading to Burny Stuff adds a fiery design to the barrel and to the Mortar Monkey's hat, which is now red.

Costs

 * Updated as of Version 29.4

Summary
Burny Stuff helps the Mortar Monkey deal additional early-game damage, similar to its role in earlier games. The damage-over-time effect is faster but lasts shorter and deals less overall damage, but it remains somewhat usable against early grouped bloons and early Lead Bloons. Often, it can be difficult to spread the Burny Stuff effect since the base Mortar has a low reload speed and small blast area.

Burny Stuff may face competition from other crosspaths, as its damage over time cannot be stacked while upgrades like Bloon Buster increase damage at a significant amount while Faster Reload and Rapid Reload provide attack speed.

Tips

 * For an early-game Burny Stuff, 0-2-2 is generally better than 2-0-2, as the Burny Stuff explosions can be applied more reliably by hitting the same location at a higher rate, while 2-0-2 is noticeably slower that the bigger blasts make not much difference to catching bloons better.
 * When paired with tier 3 and above for the top path, the Burny Stuff crosspath gives the mortar a great DPS boost, mostly against regular bloons, due to the burn effect piercing multiple layers; it also gives a decent DPS boost against blimps, especially with The Biggest One.
 * The disadvantage of not using the Rapid Reload crosspath is not improving stun frequency, and not getting an easier time hitting bloons, the latter can be mitigated on certain track spots, or by using slowing effects, for example.
 * These upgrades can both stun and deal high damage, although with less effective stun potential compared to getting Rapid Reload.
 * Bear in mind that the napalm effect only applies to its main explosion and not to its secondary explosions.
 * Crosspathing Burny Stuff to Heavy Shells, Artillery Battery or Pop and Awe is not very useful, because it competes with Bigger Blast and Bloon Buster and due to the small amount of extra damage it does compared to crosspathing with the other path, since the increased attack speed of Artillery Battery cannot stack Burny Stuff beyond its base rate.

Bugs

 * Current
 * [unknown update] Upgrading the Mortar Monkey to 0-1-2 will produce the Bigger Blasts Burny Stuff explosion sprite instead of the normal Burny Stuff explosion sprite. 0-2-2 fixes this visual issue.

currently none?
 * Patched

Trivia

 * Upgrading to this upgrade turns the mortar shells orange-red, and explosions turn orange-red too. In BTD5, adding Burny Stuff made the explosions very red.
 * In BTD6, a Heavy Shells with Burny Stuff could not affect Black Bloons until Version 7.0, when it got fixed.
 * In BTD6, the description for Burny Stuff was incorrect until Version 24.0. Although its old description claimed that bloons would be set on fire on "each hit", they only set on fire if bloons are damaged. So a Black Bloon can be "hit" by a Mortar Monkey, but it won't be affected by it. Version 24.0 makes the description factually correct again, albeit a bit more wordy.