Dark Champion

"Champion dark blades excel at puncturing and ruining all Bloon types. Darkshift ability extends mapwide."

- BTD6 description as of Version 17.0

Dark Champion is the Tier 4 upgrade of Path 3 for the Super Monkey in Bloons TD 6. It serves as an overall stat buff for the Dark Knight.

The Super Monkey now shoots twice as fast as before, alternating from each arm, firing every 0.03s by default, and every 0.015s with Plasma Blasts. These improved dark blades deal much more damage to all bloon types, including Lead and Purple, dealing 2 damage, +3 MOAB-class damage, +2 Ceramic damage. Additionally, knockback against Leads and Ceramics is -100% speed, unlike Dark Knight, which only reduces these bloons' speeds by 90%.

Additionally, the Dark Knight's Darkshift ability is upgraded, allowing the Dark Champion to teleport to anywhere on the map, instead of being limited to only within own range.

The Dark Champion upgrade costs $51,000 on Easy difficulty, $60,000 on Medium, $64,800 on Hard, and $72,000 on Impoppable.

Summary
The Dark Champion is a high-risk, high-reward upgrade. It strengthens the Super Monkey's stats, improves Darkshift, and excels at popping DDTs, but for an expensive price. If you want overall damage and not DDT-popping power, a group of Dark Knights or 2 Sun Avatars would better suffice.

Dark Champion features as a powerful win condition, having high DPS by virtue of its stats. It also happens to apply Knockback as a decent status effect, and comes with the ability to teleport anywhere on the map for extensive mobility. However, much of this utility falls short due to its weakness towards Super Ceramics, having low pierce and easily getting overwhelmed by them. Overall, with the proper support, Dark Champion is powerful, but it must be used with caution.

Tips

 * Due to Plasma Blasts doubling the Dark Champion's attack speed and providing much-needed pierce, the top path is the better crosspath choice. Path 2 crosspaths add little benefit, as the range bonuses are redundant and its pierce benefits are almost no better than those from Path 1.
 * Due to its low pierce compared to its price, the power of a Dark Champion is greatly boosted by Obyn Greenfoot and Stronger Stimulant's pierce buffs.
 * It is notable that Dark Champion does especially well against DDTs, since they have fairly low health and usually need little pierce to effectively pop. Focus your support for harder, hyper-dense rounds such as 96 and 98.
 * Overclock is an excellent support tower to increase its already high DPS, as it is the second most expensive Tier 4 upgrade in the game, which means that you can have 100% uptime with Overclock. Another valuable support tower for the Dark Champion is Shattering Shells, which reduces the RBE of Fortified rounds massively and removes Fortified from child super ceramics.
 * If you are only looking for the utility of Knockback, the Sun Avatar is a much better choice than the Dark Champion, due to its higher pierce and lower price.
 * The Dark Champion is very useful in Muddy Puddles since it can teleport around to other lanes. However, this is less effective in Bloody Puddles because Bloons enter from multiple entrances at the same time.

Sounds
When relogging into a game having Dark Champion upgrade or above:
 * [Bat screeching]

When activating Darkshift Ability:
 * [Teleporting]

Trivia

 * The Dark Champion, like Sun Temple, is a Tier 4 upgrade that allows the Super Monkey to pop bloons of any type.
 * A 2-0-4 Dark Champion on Impoppable Mode is the most expensive tower that can be picked up by the Door Gunner MK ability for Special Poperations.
 * As of v30.0, it is the only non-Path 2 Tier 4 tower to have an ability.