Cripple MOAB (BTD6)

"Crippled MOABs are immobilized for longer and take extra damage from all other attacks."

- In-game description

Cripple MOAB is the fifth upgrade of Path 1 for the Sniper Monkey in Bloons TD 6. It allows the Sniper Monkey to temporarily stun and cripple MOAB-class Bloons (7.0s for MOABs, 6.0s for BFBs, 3.0s for ZOMGs, 4.0s for DDTs, and 0.75s for BADs and Boss Bloons), causing them to become vulnerable to +5 damage for the stun duration (or debuff duration for BADs and Bosses). It deals 80 damage per hit instead of 30, plus +15 to Ceramics. With Shrapnel Shot, each shrapnel piece deals 12 damage instead of 6 from Maim MOAB, and can apply both stun and debuff.

It costs $28,900 on Easy, $34,000 on Medium, $36,720 on Hard, and $40,800 on Impoppable.

Summary
Cripple MOAB specializes at crippling single-target blimps, especially for ZOMGs, BADs, and most particularly Boss Bloons. Its main benefit is not from its increased damage, but from helping other towers apply extra damage to blimps affected by the Cripple MOAB. In combination with towers with high projectile count and high attack speed, affected blimps will become destroyed a lot more quickly. Its infinite range is a major benefit to its overall performance.

Tips

 * Cripple MOAB by itself will not deal much damage. It will reach its optimum when paired with fast towers such as Super Monkeys, or towers that shoot multiple projectiles per shot such as Overdrive, since they will help quickly damage MOAB-class bloons crippled by Cripple MOAB.
 * Similar strategies that Super Brittle would require to optimize its strengths can also be applied to Cripple MOAB, although Cripple MOAB has the advantage to attack at any range.
 * Unlike Maim MOAB, it's far more important to set Cripple MOAB to Strong, unless it's for stunning blimps closer to the exit. The combined stun and debuff effects last a considerably long time on affected blimps, so there should be less worry for blimps to start moving again.
 * As of Version 20.0, the debuff effect of Cripple MOAB for all MOAB-class Bloons below a BAD lasts longer than the base tower attack speed. Using the 5-0-2 crosspath allows almost full uptime at crippling BADs, while any crosspath will always cripple the same blimps as long as it hits them consecutively each shot.
 * Normally, the optimal crosspath for Cripple MOAB should be based on the defense's needs. Because it can permanently stun and debuff any blimp below BAD regardless of crosspaths, the 5-2-0 Cripple MOAB is a good choice for combating rounds before Round 100, as it can apply those effects to multiple blimps per shot, naturally detect DDTs, and can deal more damage via its improved shrapnel. The 5-0-2 Cripple MOAB is still superior at applying a near-permanent debuff to BADs, as it attacks fast enough to apply almost full crippling uptime.
 * However, a 5-x-0 Cripple MOAB can shoot every 0.811s if adding both Jungle Drums and Overclock, which means the uptime versus BADs can actually be almost on level with a raw 5-0-2 Cripple MOAB's stun uptime. That is equivalent to just over 92% uptime compared to the 96% uptime from a raw 5-0-2 Cripple MOAB. In either case, including an Elite Sniper will exceed 100% uptime.
 * Cripple MOAB's debuff can be stacked with Super Brittle and the Glue Storm ability, for a total of +11 damage to affected blimps.

Trivia

 * Cripple MOAB is one of the few 4th-tier upgrades from BTD5 that have been increased to a Tier-5 upgrade, the others being Absolute Zero, Glaive Lord, and Ray of Doom.
 * Since Version 11.0, this upgrade applies an "X" mark on a B.A.D. for the debuff duration to indicate the debuff effect that other towers can utilize. The "X" mark stays longer with the Version 20.0 buff.
 * The Cripple MOAB in BTD6 visually resembles the older Cripple MOAB upgrade from BTD5, except the monkey now wears full black clothing underneath the bush disguise, and its rifle is covered in green tape and comes with a visible infrared light scope (official artwork only).
 * The upgrade icon for Cripple MOAB features a heavily damaged BFB propeller. This can be seen as a reference to the BTD5 Cripple MOAB's artwork.