Ray of Doom (BTD6)

"Creates a solid line of annihilation. You can erase most Bloons at your leisure."

- BTD6 description

Ray of Doom (sometimes abbreviated as RoD) is the Tier 5 upgrade of Path 1 for the Dartling Gunner in Bloons TD 6. Like the Ray of Doom in BTD5, the Ray of Doom shoots a solid beam of constant destruction. It is a much more powerful version of Plasma Accelerator, and it deals extremely high damage with its laserbeam to compensate the lack of a high damage focal point. Ray of Doom now gains the normal damage type, allowing it to damage any bloon type including Purple Bloons.

The solid beam of destruction deals 25 damage per 0.20s, and the Laser Shock status effect deals 20 damage per 1.0s for 5.0 seconds. The RoD's intense laser can also pierce up to 1000 bloons, which for most cases is roughly infinite.

It costs $68,000 on Easy, $80,000 on Medium, $86,400 on Hard, and $96,000 on Impoppable.

Summary
Ray of Doom is the best solo option at dealing huge damage with the least amount of lag possible. As such, if there is a great excess of money available, Ray of Doom should be the main option to go for main DPS while using as little device energy as possible. Because it is weak against DDTs and BADs, support against those types should be added too. Most of the time, you don't even have to worry about superceramics swarming your defenses, due to the Ray of Doom's ridiculously high amount of pierce and the fact that it can destroy superceramics in less than a second.

While it is extremely expensive on CHIMPS, it can be reasonably afforded on most maps with intense maximization of the Plasma Accelerator alongside general defense. Ray of Doom can be reasonably afforded by between Rounds 87 and 90 with a moderate amount of income budgeting and micromanagement. Once afforded, it is a dominator against weaker blimps and Super Ceramics, accounting positioning, though it will need support against DDTs and BADs (e.g. Spike Storms) to assist the rest of the rounds.

Tips

 * The 5-2-0 crosspath is highly preferred. There is no real benefit in adding faster swivel speed because combining extreme damage from the power laserbeam with +50% attack speed compensates for the Dartling Gunner's slow rotation speed, and the pierce buff from Powerful Darts is insignificant due to the Ray of Doom's already massive pierce.
 * Add Jungle Drums and Overclock to optimize the Ray of Doom's performance.
 * Despite its massive pierce, the Ray of Doom's comparatively low single-target damage causes it to struggle somewhat against Fortified ZOMGs, Fortified DDTs, and BADs. For these cases, adding countermeasures against high-HP blimps addresses the Ray of Doom's weaknesses to those types of bloons.
 * Ray of Doom cannot pass through Line of Sight obstacles, making it a bad option on maps with lots of obstacles, unless it is placed on high ground.
 * If deciding to buff Ray of Doom with Alchemist, make sure to have a 4-2-0 Stronger Stimulant buff a single Ray of Doom. This will allow the buff to stay on almost continuously, unless there are more attack speed buffs in place, where you will need more Alchemists. Do note however, that a single 4-2-0 Alchemist will only provide approximately +6% damage to the Ray of Doom, due to its already high base damage.
 * With constant attacking, a Ray of Doom can wipe out Super Ceramics in under half a second, MOABs in approximately 1.5 seconds, BFBs in approximately 6 seconds, Round 80-100 ZOMGs in approximately 20-30 seconds, and Round 100 BADs in approximately 155 seconds.
 * Target Ray of Doom along a straight line, specifically along the straight paths on maps such as In The Loop or Resort. This will optimize its extremely high pierce and damage potential.
 * Even though Ray of Doom is an extremely expensive upgrade, Prince of Darkness + Plasma Accelerator can actually fully save up for Ray of Doom on easier CHIMPS maps, allowing the rounds up to Round 100 to become almost trivialized.
 * Ray of Doom and M.A.D are a good pair for many late-game rounds, as M.A.D can pop most blimps with ease, and Ray of Doom can pop a large quantity of ceramics spawned from these blimps.

Trivia

 * The Ray of Doom's redesigned model was revealed in the Dartling Gunner reveal trailer.
 * Ray of Doom is the first Tier 5 upgrade of an introduced returning tower in BTD6 where the BTD5 counterpart was a Tier 4 upgrade. Other Tier 5 upgrades in BTD6 that were formerly Tier 4 upgrades include Glaive Lord, Cripple MOAB, and Absolute Zero, but the Boomerang Monkey, Sniper Monkey, and Ice Monkey were all released on the initial release of BTD6.
 * The Ray of Doom's outfit and design could be close to Iron Man, However, its much close from Red Ranger/Akai Sentai from Power Rangers/Super Sentai.
 * The design of the Ray of Doom is likely based on stereotypical supervillain death rays.
 * Before Version 23.0's price buffs, the BTD6 Ray of Doom upgrade alone costed twice as much as the upgrade alone in BTD5.
 * At 75,000 XP, the Ray of Doom has the fourth highest XP requirement of any non-Paragon upgrade, followed by the Super Monkey's Tier 5 upgrades The Anti-Bloon, Legend of the Night, and True Sun God in that order.
 * Prior to the Version 24.0 Plasma Accelerator and Ray of Doom attack speed buff, with constant attacking, and not taking Laser Shock damage into account, a Ray of Doom without attack speed buffs or Faster Barrel Spin can wipe out Super Ceramics in less than 3 seconds, Fortified Super Ceramics in less than 6 seconds, and even shorter for regular MOABs (roughly 2-3 seconds). The same Ray of Doom takes roughly 7-10 seconds to wipe out BFBs, Round 80-100 ZOMGs take between 40-60 seconds to pop, Round 90-100 DDTs take roughly 5-6 seconds to pop, and Round 100 BADs take roughly 280 seconds to pop.
 * The laser particles are still normal size when the small monkeys option is turned on.
 * According to Ninja Kiwi's December 3rd 2021 blog, Ray of Doom Dartling sits on a recliner seat. The operator describes it as "relaxing on a cloud", but Dr. Monkey says it's his "patented La-Z-Monkey technology" according to the thoughts of Ninja Kiwi.