Perma-Spike/Strategies

Strategy
Perma-Spike is an easy tower to simply add to your defense. By nature of its design, it is extremely effective at exit protection, being good against fast bloons with low RBE. In some usage, this generally applies to DDTs and superceramics, and to a degree leaking MOABs.

Perma-Spike increases much of its potential via the use of stat boosts, especially those that increase attack speed. Crosspathing to 0-2-5 Perma-Spike, which increases attack speed by 122%, will effectively grant 2.2x more damage stockpiling than a non-crosspathed Perma-Spike. On the other hand, a 2-0-5 Perma-Spike grants only +20 pierce, which effectively only adds 1.6x more damage stockpiling at a slower refresh rate. Thus, it is better off crosspathing the Spike Factory with Path 2 prior to getting Perma-Spike.

In addition to internal upgrade boosts, Perma-Spike benefits greatly with external sources of stat boosts. This makes it a good combo with a 2-x-x Jungle Drums Village and a 3-0-2 Berserker Brew Alchemist or its upgrade Stronger Stimulant Alchemist. Besides simple attack speed bonuses, the extra damage and pierce add significantly greater damage-stockpiling potential to Perma-Spike.

Technically, the most important external buff is the Acidic Mixture Dip. The slow attack speed of Perma-Spike ensures that the Acidic Mixture Dips do not expire immediately if no other towers are in range, thus producing "permanent" lead-popping power, rendering the Path 1 Perma-Spike crosspath useless when Alchemists are enabled. Do note that this means that Perma-Spike will not be able to pop Frozen Bloons, and a single frozen bloon can remove the whole spike pile. Another option is to use a Monkey Intelligence Bureau to guarantee lead-popping power for it and all towers nearby, but it is pricier than Acidic Mixture Dip.

Overclock can be used to further boost Perma-Spike to further increase the Spike Factory's power. For the price of approximately 40% of the cost of Perma-Spike, itself, it can double the attack speed of Perma-Spike, resulting in an incredibly tough spike stockpile. Even with Stronger Stimulant, an Overclocked Perma-Spike with nearby Jungle Drums would still be slow enough not to consume Acidic Mixture Dip faster than can be re-supplied. The only downside to Overclock is that a non-discounted 0-2-5 Spike Factory currently costs $40,870 on Hard Mode, which barely passes the $40,000 full-duration overclocking limit, which means it can only be overclocked up to 2/3 of the time without adding a second Overclock to reset the old expired one. However, this pricetag limitation could be overcome by placing double Monkey Commerce discounts for the 0-2-3 Spike Factory prior to Perma-Spike, including the base cost of the Spike Factory, thereby reducing the total cost of the Perma-Spike down to just less than $40,000. This combo is often a good strategy to beating most single-path Expert maps on C.H.I.M.P.S. such as Dark Castle and Workshop.

Other methods of optimizing Perma-Spike include stalling out the rounds so that it can produce many more spikes per round in preparation for future rounds. With enough stall from the below mentioned towers, it is possible for spikes to continuously regenerate with the use of Overclock, making it possible to go headfirst even against dense RBE rounds such as 94, 96 and 98, which is usually vital for a successful Workshop C.H.I.M.P.S. run.


 * Maim MOAB set to Last and targeting on ZOMGs will ensure that they will be stunned so that none of the towers except a single Maim MOAB can attack the ZOMG, thereby giving Perma-Spike more time to stockpile extra spikes.


 * 0-x-2 Ice Monkeys stalling Super Ceramics are another viable method of stalling out rounds.


 * Downdraft is able to blow back super ceramics to the Ice Monkeys.


 * Always keep in mind to avoid infinite range towers that easily pop the stalled superceramics.

Although, in the end, Perma-Spike still can have limited popping power, so do consider your other tower choices carefully.
 * While MOAB Shove may be the weakest stall because it can be difficult to control, a successful stall can become very powerful. Its advantages come from its ability to be moved and also slower killing of blimps. It may be good to note that if the MOAB Shove is targeting Frozen Bloons from the aforementioned Ice Tower it can create a close to infinite stall.

Optimal Perma-Spike spots are important to consider prior to placing Perma-Spike. Important aspects to consider include whether Perma-Spike is far enough from the map to provide maximum stockpiling potential, whether the spikes avoid any potential to accidentally become consumed by incoming entrance bloons, whether sufficient exit-stopping coverage is achieved, and, in the case of multiple paths, whether all paths are covered by the spikes. All of these aspects determine how "good" of a placement a Perma-Spike is. In C.H.I.M.P.S. Mode, it is impossible to resell to re-position the Perma-Spike placement, so be sure to plan placements prior to placement.

There are only a few maps where the Permaspike may have a few complications when it comes to optimization, which comes due to the lack of single-entry-single-exit on certain maps. Usually setting the target to Close should help target out the intersections of exits. However, there is no easy solution to optimizing Permaspike on harder maps such as #Ouch or Muddy Puddles, where there are either multiple intersection exit points or multiple disconnected exits. To solve the latter problem, Support Chinook could be used to carry Permaspike along the map each round to organize into their new appropriate exit-protection roles. Unfortunately, Permaspike may have trouble on Quad, due to the map having multiple non-converging lanes that do simultaneously allow bloons to enter and/or exit; as a result, it will be very difficult to maintain good Permaspike piles on all four intersection points, even with Support Chinook. It is near impossible to provide a good Permaspike spot for the map Bloody Puddles, as there are both two simultaneously occuring paths per round as well as alternation between each of the multiple paths, a combination combining all of the worst map aspects for Permaspike.

Optimal Permaspike Placements
(Construction: Will add optimal Spike Factory spots later with a gallery dedicated for Spike Factory spots. Will in addition discuss best use of Permaspike, including best upgrade combinations, best towers to pair nearby, and other good tips with Permaspike.)