MOAB Mauler (BTD6)

"MOAB Maulers do much more damage to MOAB-Class Bloons."

- In-game description

MOAB Mauler (sometimes shortened to Mauler) is the third upgrade of Path 2 for the Bomb Shooter in Bloons TD 6. It deals 19 damage to MOAB-class bloons, but still deals only 1 damage to other types of bloons. Additionally, it adds +5 range on top of the Missile Launcher upgrade, for a total of 49 range.

It costs $935 on Easy, $1,100 on Medium, $1,190 on Hard and $1,320 on Impoppable.

Appearance
This upgrade retains its missile base launch platform. The missile's color scheme changes to yellow and gold, its radius increases (and hence a less pointy tip), gains an additional fin on the bottom, and its shark mouth design is larger. The mouth design is also smiling, making the MOAB Mauler missile display an angry smile.

Summary
The MOAB Mauler is a cheap option to bolster the mid-game MOAB defense, or even spammed for the late-game to counter groups of MOAB-class bloons. It can be chosen as a main form of MOAB-popping by using many MOAB Maulers, or buy a small amount for support. It can be quite tedious to buy many MOAB Maulers, but their power builds up immensely given enough of them, especially when paired with range-oriented supports such as Primary Mentoring. Consider using it, especially when paired with Striker Jones as the active hero, in fact the best support option for Mauler spam. Given the Mauler's massive MOAB-class destructive potential at varying volumes, both spaced and grouped, it should also be paired with towers capable of dealing with Ceramics and below, such as Bloon Impact.

Tips

 * Depending on the situation, MOAB Maulers should be set to First or Strong targeting. This is because when rounds become filled with MOABs, BFBs and ZOMGs, First targeting will allow MOAB Maulers to deal some damage against the lower tier MOABs instead of constantly focusing on the largest blimp while allowing weaker blimps to leak. First Targeting may also be preferred to pop parent bloons slower and thus prevent children bloons from overwhelming a defense.
 * The MOAB Mauler can be be used in tandem with the Top Path Monkey Village very well. It benefits the most from the increased range from Primary Training, the free Tier 1 upgrades and further range buffs from Primary Mentoring, and even more from Primary Expertise's free Tier 1 and 2 upgrades.
 * Use Striker Jones with MOAB Maulers. They synergise well, particularly the global attack speed buffs and the removal of the black bloon property immunities and the double damage from Level 20 Artillery Command. MOAB Maulers lose a noticeable amount of value without Striker Jones.
 * Striker Jones and Top Path Villages are great buffs, as they not only buff MOAB Maulers, but also affect with other towers that are great MOAB Mauler partners.
 * Before Round 80, The Big One and Recursive Cluster are great choices to help with dense bloon rounds and ceramics from blimps.
 * After Round 80, Bloon Impact and Arctic Wind can help to handle superceramics which MOAB Maulers have much lower damage against.
 * Generally, 1-3-0 Maulers are the preferred crosspath. This is in part because Primary Mentoring can provide Bigger Bombs for free, but the pierce and blast radius make that crosspath better against grouped blimps. The range via Extra Range is a small improvement against spaced blimps and also makes it possible for the tower to hit them more times, thus dealing more damage to them, so it may be used in some circumstances.
 * The tier 2 Frag Bombs and Heavy Bombs tend to be subpar damage soon after early game, so those upgrades are generally considered unnecessary for the most part, but Heavy Bombs can still be useful. While Frags themselves are subpar, Frag Bombs is niche as a way of adding direct explosive black-popping, including visible DDTs. On the other hand, the Heavy Bombs upgrade is useful for dealing with densely clumped MOAB-class because of the much extra pierce aspect (it also increases damage versus MOAB-class Bloons from 19 to 20, but that is almost irrelevant).
 * MOAB Maulers do not deal extra damage to Ceramic Bloons and will struggle against them. Maulers may also waste pierce on them as they take down MOAB-class bloons. To combat Ceramics, especially Super Ceramics in the later rounds, use defenses specifically designed to counter them such as Cryo Cannon or Bloon Impact.

Extra Notes (Version History)

 * Although fans anticipated an inevitable nerf for MOAB Maulers leading towards Version 20.0, MOAB Maulers only received a nerf to its Ceramic damage. Ninja Kiwi stated that this was done to make MOAB Maulers "intended to be more of a MOAB Specialist". This was because before then, a Striker Jones + MOAB Mauler spam strategy was extremely effective at both MOAB-class and Super Ceramics, but the Version 20.0 nerfs made the synergy less effective against Super Ceramics.
 * Maulers went from having +5 Ceramic damage all the way to no bonus Ceramic damage.

Trivia

 * Unlike its BTD5 counterpart, MOAB Mauler in BTD6 are not statistically identical to its previous upgrade beyond gaining extra MOAB-class damage. In BTD6, MOAB Mauler gains extra range too.