Wizard Lord Phoenix

"Wizard Lord becomes a master of the flame, turns into a super powerful Lava Phoenix for a short time."

- In-game description

The  is a Path 2, Tier 5 upgrade for the Wizard Monkey in Bloons TD 6. Along with a permanent phoenix from the Summon Phoenix upgrade, this upgrade grants an ability that allows Wizard Lord to morph into a much more powerful version of the Summon Phoenix. While the ability is active, a carved flame rune is left where the Wizard was. Activating the ability temporarily transforms the Wizard Monkey into a super powerful phoenix that deals massively increased damage and pierce, can pop any bloon type including Purple Bloons, and in addition to the improved phoenix flame attack (with significantly faster projectile speed), the phoenix regularly spews out 8 fireballs at 45° angles.

The main Wizard gains an overhaul in fire attack improvements too. The Wizard's Dragon's Breath attack gains 50 pierce instead of 4, and deals 6 damage each, the Wizard's Fireball attack deals 27 damage instead of 9 from Dragon's Breath, and the Wall of Fire attack deals 3 damage per tick.

The ability lasts 20 seconds and has a cooldown of 45 seconds. It is important to consider that there is always an initial cooldown of 15s for the Wizard Lord Phoenix regardless of whether the Summon Phoenix ability was in cooldown or not.

It costs $45,900 on Easy, $54,000 on Medium, $58,320 on Hard, and $64,800 on Impoppable.

Appearance
TBA

Statistics
The following is a list of statistics of a Wizard Monkey with Wizard Lord Phoenix. It includes its base statistics and all associated crosspathing interactions. Expand the box on the right to see further information.
 * Updated as of Version 28.3


 * Base stats


 * Ability stats


 * Other stats


 * Crosspathing interactions

Damage Types

 * See also: Damage Types/Bloons TD 6/Magic

The following are a list of wiki-written damage types associated by a Wizard Monkey with Wizard Lord Phoenix. These damage type statistics include how it attacks and how these attacks would affect bloons. Expand the box on the right to see further information.
 * Updated as of Version 28.3


 * Base attack(s)


 * Ability


 * Other

Summary
Wizard Lord Phoenix is a very expensive upgrade that can be used to inflict massive damage to all bloons on the entire screen. If timed properly, it can substantially clear very dense rounds such as Round 98. However, a Wizard Lord Phoenix without his ability is extremely weak, even with the much stronger fire attacks and the added permanent phoenix, so backup support is most certainly required with this tower. Like most of the powerful ability-based towers, adequate methods of stalling should be added to increase the availability of the Wizard Lord Phoenix's ability in preparation for difficult situations.

Tips

 * Upgrading Wizard Lord Phoenix to 2-5-0 or 0-5-2 will make no difference to the Wizard Lord Phoenix ability, as the abilities are not affected by crosspaths. However, 2-5-0 is generally better because this takes advantage of the improved 50 pierce (opposed to 4 pierce) of the original non-ability Dragon's Breath attacks to last much longer, making it useful for reaching many more bloons before projectile expiry. The opposite crosspath, 0-5-2, is still useful, as it allows it to attack Camo Bloons with its Dragon's Breath attacks, although the pierce buff bonuses for all its attacks are near negligible. Wizard Lord Phoenix ability already detects camo, so Monkey Sense has little use beyond specialized targeting against DDTs via Camo Prioritization.
 * It is worth a note that the Wizard Lord Phoenix transformation and the regular phoenix are both considered sub-towers, and thus cannot be buffed by Alchemists.
 * Consider using this upgrade on maps where the Monkey Ace's Centered Path is highly effective, as the Wizard Lord Phoenix's radial meteor attacks will benefit greatly from shooting directly under bloons.
 * The Wizard Lord Phoenix upgrade is extremely powerful when timed correctly. One entire use of the ability is able to greatly reduce extremely difficult rounds such as Rounds 98 and 99 if used correctly.
 * Apparently, the Wizard Lord Phoenix transformation will always start travelling towards the direction where the Wizard Lord Phoenix disappeared. In the case where the ability is used for the first time in a game, the Wizard Lord Phoenix always guarantees to travel towards the left of the original monkey's carved rune, out towards where the closest point where the Centered Path pathway is.
 * Stalling is harder with Wizard Lord Phoenix, as its permanent phoenix can still deal damage to bloons outside the Wizard's immediate range.

Bugs

 * Before the 2.0.0 update, another Wizard Lord Phoenix could have been placed and upgraded while the other was in phoenix form making many clones of the phoenix itself.
 * In early versions of the game, attempting to move the tower with the Support Chinook while it is still transformed would cause a game crash. This was fixed on version 3.0.
 * There is a bug where a building on High Finance would destroy the active Wizard Lord Phoenix's phoenix form.Attacking Flame Rune.png
 * There is a bug when testing personal challenges. If the player enters a round with the Wizard Lord ability still active, lose that round and replay the round, the ability will be deactivated while the flame rune is still there. The rune will seem to "face" to the target bloons and attack just like a normal Wizard Lord. Reactivating the ability will make it normal again.
 * If placed on water with Snowstorm, the Phoenix that is spawned will have ice under it.
 * In version 12.1, a bug existed that you cannot gain the 2TC Achievement (Complete a game in CHIMPS Difficulty with only 2 towers) by using a Wizard Lord Phoenix as one of the 2 towers. This was likely because Wizard Lord Phoenix counted as two towers: the base tower and the phoenix. This bug was fixed on version 17.0.
 * There was a bug in Version 17.0 where the Wizard Lord Phoenix's regular phoenix disappears once the Wizard Lord Phoenix's main ability had expired. Interestingly enough, the transformed phoenix would still turn into the regular phoenix when quitting and rejoining a saved game. This was fixed in Version 17.1, but now the regular phoenix remains on the map always, regardless of whether the ability is active or not.
 * If the Wizard Lord Phoenix is given enough speed buffs (Homeland Defense, Jungle Drums, Stronger Stimulant, True Sun God with support sacrifices and maxed out Ultraboost ability at a minimum), activating the ability will spawn 2 phoenixes.

Sounds
When activating Wizard Lord Phoenix Ability:
 * [Phoenix transformation]

When a fireball explodes:
 * [explosion]
 * [explosion]
 * [explosion]
 * [explosion]
 * [explosion]

When deploying a Wall of Fire blaze:
 * [flame ignition]
 * [flame ignition]
 * [flame ignition]
 * [flame ignition]
 * [flame ignition]

Trivia

 * Prior to Version 8.0, with the nerfs to income-related abilities, Wizard Lord Phoenix was the only Tier 5 tower to have an initial cooldown regardless of whether its previous upgrade's ability was in cooldown or not.
 * 0-5-0 Wizard Lord Phoenix is actually cheaper than a 5-0-0 Apache Prime, costing roughly $67,660 on Hard compared to 5-0-0 Apache Prime's $74,790 pricetag on the same difficulty. It is also slightly more expensive than a 0-5-0 Plasma Monkey Fan Club, which costs roughly $63,600 on Hard.
 * In terms of entire BTD6 history, Wizard Lord Phoenix is considered the most buffed upgrade in BTD6 history, initially starting off as an extremely expensive ability with the power of only a few phoenixes but later gaining a much stronger ability plus a permanent normal phoenix and major stat boosts for its alternate attacks.