Blade Maelstrom (BTD6)

"Blade Maelstrom ability: Covers the area in a storm of blades."

- In-game description

Blade Maelstrom is the 4th upgrade of Path 2 for the Tack Shooter in Bloons TD 6. This upgrade grants a new ability that creates two rapidly shooting streams of extremely high-pierce blades that spiral outwards clockwise for 3 seconds. These special blades deal up to 200 pierce (rather than infinite as they do in BTD5 generation games). Cooldown for the ability is 20 seconds, and there is a 6.67s initial cooldown before using the ability for the first time.

It costs $2,295 on Easy, $2,700 on Medium, $2,915 on Hard, and $3,240 on Impoppable.

Appearance
The base of the tower becomes larger compared to the previous upgrade, Blade Shooter, and the top circular platform is split in two because of the appearance of twelve sharp metal tips that spin clockwise. The new topmost platform becomes gray, while the picture of a blade is now a lighter shade of gray. The middle platform, instead, has now the style that the top one of the Blade Shooter had: blue pad with a studded iron outline.

Statistics
The following is a list of statistics of a Tack Shooter with Blade Shooter. It includes its base statistics and all associated crosspathing interactions. Expand the box on the right to see further information.
 * Updated as of Version 27.3


 * Base stats


 * Ability stats


 * Crosspathing interactions

Damage Types

 * See also: Damage Types/Bloons TD 6/Primary

The following are a list of wiki-written damage types associated by a Tack Shooter with Blade Shooter. These damage type statistics include how it attacks and how these attacks would affect bloons. Expand the box on the right to see further information.
 * Updated as of Version 27.3


 * Base attack(s)


 * Ability

Summary
The main power of Blade Maelstrom is its high pierce. As such, it can immensely reduce the difficulty of grouped bloon rounds, as well as deal general cleanup whenever necessary. Proper placement and ability timing is required to utilize the most out of its high pierce, but it is highly effective for its price. It is not very useful in later rounds, but due to its cost-effectiveness it remains part of an effective strategy in certain CHIMPS games. It sees most use on Race Events that enable it, often transition into a Super Maelstrom later on.

Tips

 * Going against the direction of the track, sometimes known as going against the grain, does more damage to to bloons, so positioning the Blade Maelstrom is important.
 * Placing a Blade Maelstrom just below a section of bloon track allows all blades to immediately hit bloons, which when timed properly shreds a substantial amount of bloons within a tight area. There is a single point where all blades immediately spawn from, and it should appear right in the middle of the Maelstrom's blade emblem.
 * Blade Maelstrom's streams are more deadlier the closer bloons are due to higher density of blades.
 * This is a cheap way to patch up defenses for Round 63, 76 and 78 which all contain dense rounds of Ceramics, due to the Maelstrom's high pierce. However, it can only handle two of the three waves of Ceramics on Round 63.
 * It is an option to get two of these, which can be able to pop all of the Ceramics on these rounds on most maps without having to wait for cooldown.
 * As a result, it is very helpful on Half Cash and on Co-Op Mode, where the player gains less money than usual to get other useful towers that can beat these rounds such as M.O.A.R. Glaives or Recursive Cluster.
 * The new added pierce cap to the ability in Version 24.0 and later makes Maelstrom much less powerful at countering Round 63.
 * When under the effect of Overclock, Ultraboost, Call to Arms or Homeland Defense, the ability will shoot out much more blades.
 * During the course of the ability, up to 90 groups of 2 blades are shot. This is because blades are shot every 0.0333s, equivalent to 30 attacks per second.
 * Blades distributed from the ability are always 12 degrees apart per blade. Therefore, it takes around 1.0s to reach a full cycle from the top in a clockwise direction to the top again, excluding attack speed bonuses. If given attack speed bonuses, it will rotate at the same rate but produce blades out closer and closer together.
 * An effective use of Maelstrom into Super Maelstrom in Race Events is to activate its ability partway and then immediately purchase the next upgrade to sustain (but unfortunately not refresh) the new ability's duration. While it requires quick timing, it cuts a substantial amount of time, leading to higher race times if microed properly.
 * In most situations, 2-4-0 is the preferable crosspath for the Blade Maelstrom: the ability reamins unchanged either way, and this crosspath makes the tower shoot twice as fast.
 * While Even More Tacks makes it shoot 12 blades instead of 8, meaning it would be easier to hit more surrounding Bloons or hit the same Bloon with multiple blades, Even Faster Shooting shoots more blades in less time, making it more efficient.

Sounds
When activating Blade Maelstrom Ability:
 * [Spraying]

Trivia

 * Out of all standard Tier 4 abilities, the Blade Maelstrom upgrade has the shortest initial cooldown out of all of them, at just 6.67s.
 * The nerf to the Blade Maelstrom ability pierce from infinite to 100 per blade back in Version 24.0 was specifically done to nerf its power in Race Event scenarios.
 * If this tower is upgraded to Super Maelstrom while the ability is active, the ability switches from tier 4 to tier 5 and lasts for 9 seconds minus the "tier 4 period" that had already passed. This is because both abilities are connected with each other and any used ability time taken will carry over from both abilities.