Wizard Monkey

"Hurls magical bolts of energy at the Bloons. Can upgrade to a variety of powerful spells."

- In-game Description

The Wizard Monkey is a Magic-class tower that was released in the initial release of Bloons TD 6. The tower retains its role from the Bloons TD 4 and Bloons TD 5 game generations, with a name change from "Monkey Apprentice" alongside other significant changes. It did not receive any teasers prior to release, but it was first shown when the game was available to select YouTubers several days before BTD6's official release date.

Wizard Monkeys produce bolts every 1.1s that pop up to 3 bloons each. It is slower than the Engineer Monkey but it can pop Frozen Bloons at the cost of not popping Purple Bloons, due to its Energy damage type. Many of the Wizard Monkey's upgrades either enhance its magical bolt or add additional powerful attacks.

It costs $320 on Easy, $375 on Medium, $405 on Hard, and $450 on Impoppable.

Description
The Wizard Monkey wears a light black cloak and a small light black wizardly hat, with yellow crescent moons on it, just as it did in BTD5 when it was called the Monkey Apprentice. It does not look very different compared to his BTD5 counterpart, other than the fact that it now has the BTD6 art style.

The Wizard Monkey has a moderate overhaul in Bloons TD 6, losing several key abilities that had been a staple for the tower in previous installments and instead replaced with some new attacks. Most lost spells from prior installments however are now found in the Druid instead. The Wizard Monkey also lost the power to pop lead bloons without any upgrades, requiring it to have the Fireball, Arcane Spike, or Necromancer: Unpopped Army upgrades in order to do so.

The Wizard Monkey can select two paths at a time, one that enhances its main energy bolt, a second that grants fire-based spells, and a third that focuses on spells geared towards detection and necromancy.

Path 1 allows the monkey to attack anywhere in its range with Guided Magic, ignoring Line of Sight. Arcane Spike allows the Wizard Monkey to pop lead bloons, as well as increasing the DPS it does to MOAB-Class bloons, and as Archmage, it inherits the Dragon's Breath and Shimmer of the second and third paths respectively. It mainly specializes in DPS.

Path 2 makes the Wizard Monkey wield fire-based attacks. However, Purple Bloons will pose a problem for it. Further down Path 2 will allow it to summon a phoenix that can also pop purple bloons at its 5th tier.

Path 3 centralizes the Wizard Monkey to focus on more of a support role with the Shimmer Upgrade that decamoizes bloons. The Necromancer: Unpopped Army upgrade transforms the Shimmer into an effective cleanup tower and even more so with Prince of Darkness.

The Wizard Monkey is classed as a Magic Monkey.

Target Priorities
The base Wizard Monkey uses the standard target priorities: First, Last, Close, Strong. Many of the Wizard's alternate attacks have target priorities that are integrated into the Wizard's own target priorities.

Certain alternate attacks have a different set of target priorities:
 * Wall of Fire always sets on Close by default. Adding Guided Magic can adjust location of where the Wall of Fire spawns based on target priority if there is a bloon within range at the time of creating the attack.
 * Summon Phoenix's phoenix's flight path is always set on Centered Path, similar to the Centered Path upgrade for the Monkey Ace. It will continue to travel clockwise around the center of the map indefinitely until it disappears.
 * Wizard Lord Phoenix's transformation always has its flight path set on Centered Path. The WLP Phoenix will continue to travel clockwise around the center of the map indefinitely until it transforms back into a monkey. Wizard Lord Phoenix's permanent phoenix acts exactly the same as Summon Phoenix's phoenix but lasts indefinitely.
 * Undead Bloons spawn quite differently from other attacks. They will spawn from as back of the bloon tracks as possible, will be smartly be spawned on lanes where bloons are nearing the exit, and will attempt to only spawn on active lanes if applicable.

Monkey Knowledge
This section displays Monkey Knowledge that has effects on Wizard Monkey and its changes when compared to one by default:
 * LingeringMagicIcon.png Lingering Magic: Projectiles fired from all Wizard Monkey have longer lifespan.
 * Bolt lasts 20% longer, from x seconds → x seconds.
 * Wall of Fire lasts 20% longer, from 4.5 seconds → 5.4 seconds
 * MagicTricksIcon.png Magic Tricks: Guided Magic and Intense Magic cost 25 less.
 * Guided Magic cost reduced from $125, $150, $160, $180 to $100, $125, $135, $160 on each difficulty.
 * Intense Magic cost reduced from $255, $300, $325, $360 to $230, $275, $300, $335 on each difficulty.
 * HotMagicIcon.png Hot Magic: All Magic type towers can pop Frozen Bloons.
 * Technically affects all Magic Monkeys, but because Wizard Monkey lacks any damage type that cannot pop Frozen, it remains unaffected.
 * FlameJetIcon.png Flame Jet: Dragon's Breath flame projectiles move much faster.
 * Dragon's Breath flame projectiles fly 50% faster.
 * ArcaneImpaleIcon.png Arcane Impale: Arcane Spike does extra damage to MOAB-Class and Ceramic Bloons.
 * Deals 17 damage instead of 16 to MOAB-Class Bloons.
 * Deals 6 damage instead of 5 to Ceramic Bloons.
 * MonkeyEducationIcon.png Monkey Education: All Monkeys XP earn rate increased by 8%.
 * BetterSellDealsIcon.png Better Sell Deals: All Monkeys sell for 5% more.
 * Increases sell potency from 70% to 75%.
 * VeteranMonkeyTrainingIcon.png Veteran Monkey Training: All Monkeys reload time reduced by 3%.
 * GlobalAbilityCooldownsIcon.png Global Ability Cooldowns: All Ability cooldowns for all Monkeys reduced by 3%.

Videos
TBA

Trivia

 * In BTD6, the three paths are based on base magic, fire magic and dark magic.
 * The Wizard Monkey used to be the only tower in Bloons TD 6 to have two fifth tier towers that have abilites being, Wizard Lord Phoenix and Soulbind.
 * This is no longer true after update 2.0 due to Soulbind getting replaced by the Prince of Darkness
 * Legend of the Night gained a new ability anyway in update 17.0 so it wouldn't have mattered.
 * The name "Wizard Monkey" is new to Bloons TD 6, as previous games never referred the Monkey Apprentice as a "Wizard Monkey". The BTD4 Tempest Tornado refers to the Apprentice as a "Monkey Wizard", but not "Wizard Monkey".
 * The minimum upgrade for Wizard Monkey to damage DDTs without supports is 0-2-2, because Fireball cannot damage DDTs, as its damaging explosion is explosive type, not fire type, but Wall of Fire is true fire type.
 * All Tier 3 Wizards gain a wand of their respective discipline colors.
 * The monkey's eyes change to orange when upgraded to x-3-x, and green for x-x-3.