Glaive Lord (BTD6)

"Glaive Lord surrounds itself in 3 special glaives that shred anything that comes near. Glaive Lord's glaives now rip through MOAB-class Bloons, slowly tearing them apart from the inside."

- In-game description

Glaive Lord is the fifth upgrade of Path 1 for the Boomerang Monkey in Bloons TD 6. The Glaive Lord gains orbiting glaives that deal constant damage while bloons are within range of them. The rotating glaives have 1000 pierce, pop camo, and deal 2 damage (+5 to Ceramics and MOAB-class, and another +2 versus Fortified) every 0.1s to nearby bloons. The orbiting glaives gain +1 damage from Red Hot Rangs and allows them to pop Frozen and Lead, but it does not shred faster with the upgrades from Path 2. Long Range Rangs increases range of the orbiting glaives from 30 to 34.5.

Alongside orbiting glaives, the Glaive Lord's thrown glaives apply fragments onto the first bloon that they hit, dealing 100 damage to it every 1.0s for up to 15s, inflicting up to 1500 damage from the shredding effect alone. As with most damage-over-time sources, the shredding damage-over-time effect cannot be stacked. In addition, the main glaive deals 8 damage instead of 1.

It costs $27,540 on Easy, $32,400 on Medium, $34,990 on Hard, and $38,880 on Impoppable.

Appearance
This upgrade turns the Glaive Lord's hood and cloak purple, with a red arrow on top of the hood, while the rest of his outfit is black with red accents. Three spinning glaives with a blue center surround the Boomerang Monkey. The rotating glaives and hand-held glaives both become red when given Red Hot Rangs.

Statistics
The following is a list of statistics of a Boomerang Monkey with Glaive Lord. It includes its base statistics and all associated crosspathing interactions. Expand the box on the right to see further information.
 * Updated as of Version 30.0

Damage Types

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

The following are a list of wiki-written damage types associated by a Dart Monkey with Sharp Shots. 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 27.3

Summary
Glaive Lord excels at popping dense groups of non-MOAB Bloons, but may have problems with countering Super Ceramics without proper placement.

Alongside a fast-shredding area-of-effect range, Glaive Lord comes with an effective secondary attack with its main glaives, where the first hit of its regular glaives can inflict a shredding damage-over-time effect, making it highly useful against multiple high HP targets, such as ZOMGs.

It still requires support against large groups of stronger bloons, but the Glaive Lord remains a somewhat decent option against polar opposites of the bloon spawns spectrum: weaker grouped bloons, and stronger high HP bloons (considering they aren't clumped).

Tips

 * The direction that the glaives spin does not matter, as the rotating glaives are only a visual indication of the continuous fixed area-of-effect radius. If placed in the correct spot, like a loop in the map In the Loop, it can completely destroy any non-MOAB Class Bloon currently in the game (at least for rounds 100 and earlier, since afterwards the extra speed will make it struggle).
 * As of Version 27.0, in general cases, the 5-0-2 crosspath will have a slight advantage against super ceramics and be able to damage bloons and MOABs with Frozen and/or Lead properties. 5-2-0 will have an advantage against MOAB-class (when "Close" targetting is being used).
 * Most of the damage done to super ceramics will come from the orbital glaives, which is only improved with the 5-0-2 crosspath, which also gives its attacks the normal damage type, allowing it to damage any bloon type (e.g. frozen and lead).
 * The Shred DoT is a huge part of the damage done to MOAB-class bloons, the extra attack speed from the 5-2-0 crosspath allows the tower to hit a bigger variety of MOAB-class (with "close" targetting option).
 * However, several factors such as the tower's position, buffs received, and slowdowns or debuffs on bloons or MOAB-class will change which crosspath will perform better, with both doing similarly well in some cases.
 * Add slows such as MOAB Glue or Glue Hose to allow more time for the Glaive Lord's orbital glaive to damage bloons. Add a 0-1-2 Ice Monkey or two to freeze down bloons, especially Super Ceramics, but be sure to allow Glaive Lord to affect Frozen Bloons before adding Ice Monkeys or else this synergy will not work.
 * If Lead Bloons or DDTs reach within range of a Glaive Lord without Red Hot Rangs or other forms of lead-popping power, the glaive ring will be completely blockaded and never damage bloons until the bloons are out of the way. The same applies to Frozen Bloons.

Trivia

 * The Glaive Lord, along with Absolute Zero, Cripple MOAB and Ray of Doom are the only Tier 4 towers in BTD5 that were moved to Tier 5 and are currently playable in BTD6.
 * Rotating Glaives speed up when bloons are within range, the effect is purely visual however.
 * Glaive Lord, Bloontonium Reactor (by extension Energizer), and The Tack Zone are all Tier 4+ towers that had their damage type changed from normal to either Sharp  or Shatter, which both cannot affect lead bloons for the sake of being more realistic to the real world.