Stronger Stimulant

"Extra strong brew has even more powerful effect on the target. Lasts even longer."

- BTD6 Description

Stronger Stimulant is a 4th upgrade on Path 1 of the Alchemist. It is an improved version of the Berserker Brew upgrade, providing bonus range, pierce, and attack speed, to boosted towers for a significantly longer duration. Each brew now grants +3 pierce instead of +2, +17.6% attack speed (x0.85 attack cooldown) instead of +11.1%, +15% range instead of +10%, and maintaining +1 layer of damage per hit, and the brew lasts for 12 seconds or 40 attacks (or 13 seconds or 55 attacks with 4-2-0), whichever comes first. Expired brews require 5.0s (4.0s with 4-2-0) before re-brewing the same tower.

It costs $2,700 on Easy, $3,000 on Medium, $3,240 on Hard, and $3,600 on Impoppable.

Description
Stronger Stimulant is an improved version of Berserker Brew; its berserker potions will have a more powerful effect on monkeys, granting +3 pierce instead of +2, +17.6% attack speed instead of +11.1%, +15% range instead of +10%, and maintaining +1 layer of damage per hit.

It also makes the potion last longer (12 seconds or 40 attacks, whichever comes first; upgraded from 5 seconds or 25 attacks). An Alchemist with this upgrade will be able to keep a maximum of two monkeys consistently boosted with Berserker Brew, whereas regular Berserker Brew wears off too quickly to consistently boost even one monkey.

Just as with Berserker Brew, the Perishing Potions upgrade also improves Stronger Stimulant brews, improving the 4-2-0 Stronger Stimulant's brew duration to 13 seconds, per-shot lifespan to 55 instead of 40, and re-brew cooldown to 4.0s instead of 5.0s.

Stronger Stimulant will give the Alchemist a more crazy appearance, along with holding two large wooden barrels with a black chimney instead of just one wooden barrel without a chimney. Also, its potions will give a glass-smashing effect upon boosting a monkey. The monkey additionally gains an X-shaped scar on his forehead and now wears goggles on an aviator's cap. The Alchemist seems to have bushy sideburns.

When purchasing the Path 2 upgrades, it will add white gloves if upgraded to Stronger Acid, or black gloves and black mouth mask if upgraded to Perishing Potions. When purchasing the Path 3 upgrades, the Faster Throwing upgrade will change the monkey's goggle shape from two eye sockets to a single lengthened socket, while the Acid Pool upgrade will change the color of the goggles from orange to blue.

Summary
Stronger Stimulant is a highly effective tower for empowering multiple nearby towers, greatly improving the attack speed, pierce, and damage of the affected towers. In particular, it is one of the best options when paired with towers that attack relatively slowly but possess a high number of projectiles, such as Bloonjitsu, Triple Guns, Recursive Cluster, Overdrive, and Destroyer with Grape Shot. It can even be viable for boosting towers with higher upgrades such as The Tack Zone or Grandmaster Ninja for a big boost of damage, although the uptime decreases for higher attack speed towers.

Tips

 * After Version 6.0, this upgrade is best utilized on slow fire rate and/or high-projectile towers such as Bomb Shooters with Recursive Cluster and Ninja Monkeys with Bloonjitsu.
 * Prior to Version 6.0, this upgrade was best utilized on high fire rate and/or high-projectile towers such as Sun Avatars. However, this is no longer the most viable option, since the potions now can wear out after a certain amount of attacks from the target tower.
 * Note that (as of 13.0), many strategies for CHIMPS mode on Advanced maps still use Stronger Stimulant together with a Sun Avatar.
 * Purchasing Faster Throwing will allow Stronger Stimulant to maintain up to three monkeys instead of just two.
 * There are many various good towers that synergize well with Stronger Stimulant, even after the Version 6.0 nerfs:
 * Stronger Stimulant can be applied nearby a lone 0-2-5 Perma-Spike in range of a Jungle Drums Village to maximize Permaspike spike production along with virtually full DDT popping power via Acidic Mixture Dip. The Alchemist should only be in range of the Perma-Spike to guarantee full DDT popping power.
 * Stronger Stimulant is very useful when paired with Icicle Impale, since it not only increases attack speed significantly (along with increased range, pierce, and damage), its Acidic Mixture Dip potions allow Icicle Impale to pop Leads and DDTs for almost all of the time, even when Icicle Impale is crosspathed with Enhanced Freeze and Deep Freeze.
 * When timed well, activated abilities such as Blade Maelstrom ability and Spike Storm ability can become significantly more effective.
 * On Hard Difficulty, one 4-0-0 Alchemist will cost $5835 ($3240 + $1350 + $380 + $270 + $595). This will be useful information in CHIMPS Mode, as spending budgets are very limited in the game, and every dollar saved would make the difference between losing and winning.
 * Stronger Stimulant is not always better than two Berserker Brews. In some cases, such as when utilizing multiple Spiked Balls to secure different exits, having separate Berserker Brews is better for each Spiked Balls. This is due to each one of those Berserker Brews having their own Acidic Mixture Dip, and because two Berserker Brews are discountable and overall cheaper while maintaining an overall high buff value.

Sounds
Starting from Stronger Stimulant, the Alchemist now plays sounds as it buffs other towers.

When brewing a nearby tower:


 * [glass smash]
 * [glass smash]
 * [glass smash]
 * [glass smash]
 * [glass smash]

Trivia

 * This upgrade changes the color of the splash that Berserker Brew makes from yellow to fuschia.
 * This upgrade also adds a glass-smash sound effect upon boosting a tower.
 * It has been proven between Version 6.0 and before 9.0 that expired Stronger Stimulant potions cannot be reapplied to the target tower until the 12-second duration is over, regardless of how many Stronger Stimulant Alchemists there are around the target tower. Link on Reddit.
 * Although not addressed directly on the Version 9.0 update patch notes, the Stronger Stimulant gained a buff to the decreased expiry cooldown. This Subreddit link describes scientifically about this very change.
 * On Version 21.0, Stronger Stimulant with the Faster Throwing crosspath costs overall $50 more expensive on Medium. Although the Acid Pool upgrade no longer needs to be purchased, the cost increase of Faster Throwing by $150 deviates against the $600 saved from not buying Acid Pool. So in a way, only $450 is saved if ignoring the price nerf to the Stronger Stimulant upgrade itself, therefore costing $50 more if the $500 price increase was taken into account.