Alchemist Brewing Strategy

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Dart Monkey receiving buffs from a Tier 4 Alchemist

It is important to consider Alchemist buffs (also referred as Alch buffs for short) for improving nearby towers. Alch buffs are a popular buffing source for defenses thanks to its low-cost but highly effective support, particularly towers that produce slow-attacking but singular multi-projectile attacks. On the other hand, Permanent Brew prefers fast-attacking towers that attacks as many projectiles as possible. But both pre-Permabrew and Permabrew buffs do prefer towers that do not rely on sub-towers as a main DPS source.

Alch Buffs

"Alch buff" by definition refers to Path 1 Alchemist buffs. The following Alchemist upgrades are going to be discussed in the article:

Acidic Mixture Dip

Berserker Brew

Stronger Stimulant

Permanent Brew

Synergy Potential (Non-Permabrew)

Good Synergies (Non-Permabrew)

Some properties of a tower's attack(s), including attack styles and attack behaviors, are favorable with Alch buffs, and therefore contribute positively to Alch synergy. These include:

• Towers with not too many different types of attacks. The less attacks to deal with, the less complex to estimate Alch buff duration. Unless fully assured about Alch buff consumption rate (to do this, Sandbox the tower in question with Alch buff)
  • There are exceptions to this principle, including 4-0-2 Bloonjitsu's separate shuriken and caltrops attacks, as its caltrops attack quite slowly and retain Alch buffs well.
• Attacks with Burst or other secondary attacks, as any secondary attacks from primary attacks will guarantee to integrate Alch buffs.
  • Examples of attacks with a burst attack include Airburst Darts and Cluster Bombs.
• Attacks that utilize Spray, shooting multiple projectiles with the same attack. Each attack of a spray will use up one Alch buff per shot, assuming single attacks per shot.
  • Examples of this include Ninja's Double Shot and Tack Sprayer.
• On-Track and Spike Pile attacks, as Alch buff will always remain no matter if the Alch buff(s) are still active on the buffed tower or not.
• Attacks with less than an attack speed of 10x per second (or, inversely, more than 0.10s attack cooldown). This is so that Alch buffs can be sustained longer, not wearing out too quickly.
• Attacks whose projectiles utilize Seeking . This is to maximize pierce potential of its projectiles.
  • Examples of this include a 4-0-1 Bloonjitsu's shurikens, Airburst Darts, and Neva-Miss Targeting.
• Towers with attacks that are independent of immediate range. This includes Tower Mobility and its subsets, especially those with Flying , as well as either Full Map Range , Extended Range . This is so that more attacks can be utilized without the buff simply wearing out, specifically for brews.
  • Examples of towers with mobility include Heli Pilots and Monkey Aces.
  • Examples of towers with full-map range or extended range include Sniper Monkeys and Advanced Intel Subs.
• Towers with low damage benefit significantly. For example, a 4-x-x Bloonjitsu would normally do five damage per attack, but 2-x-x buff doubles its damage against Ceramics/MOAB-Class per shot from five to ten.
• Expensive towers. Regardless of whether it uses multiple projectiles or not, if the price for a Stronger Stimulant is negligible compared to the price of the target tower, the attack cooldown multiplier alone will make a noticeable difference in its DPS.

Poor Synergies (Non-Permabrew)

Some properties of a tower's attack(s), including attack styles and attack behaviors, may worsen performance with Alch buffs. That being said, this does not mean towers with these properties are bad with Alch buffs, just less favorable. These include:

• Attacks with multiple attacks per shot (i.e. Multiple Targeting ).
  • An example of this is Robo Monkey, resulting in wearing out Alch buffs twice as fast.
• Towers that attack too fast. Elite Defender and Plasma Blasts can exhaust the buff very quickly even with 420 Stronger Stimulant, thus gaining minimal benefit. This can also be true for moderately fast attacking towers under Overclock or Call To Arms.
  • Note that in some cases, it is worthwhile to apply an Alchemist buff to these towers, even if they exhaust the buff quickly. Sun Avatars are so expensive that the price spent on Stronger Stimulant is negligible, but the temporary benefit gained is still worth it.
• Single towers reliant on being surrounded by many other monkeys. Grandmaster Ninja may be difficult to buff with Alchemist because it requires 20 Shinobi Tactics for best results, and to a lesser extent, Avatar of Wrath and Spirit of the Forest for similar reasons. It is still possible to guarantee the alchemist will buff these towers with Stronger Stimulant with good placement, however.
  • Another example is the Path 1 Heli Pilot. Quad Darts and subsequent upgrades all have multi-target main attacks that use brews up at double the speed, and the Apache Dartship attacks far too fast to make efficient use of the buff. While Quad Darts doesn't consume all buffs so quickly due to its moderate attack speed, it noticeably drains buffs faster than expected because each quad shot is actually two simultaneous twin shots, not a spray of four shots.
• Attacks with only Impact and no secondary attacks, as this wastes pierce-buffing potential from Berserker Brew and above.
• Towers whose main damage depends on Sub-Towers, but not necessarily towers that have a consistent Deploy Sub-Tower attack. Alchemists cannot buff sub-towers directly, which only allows them to benefit the main tower, who is often weaker than its sub-towers.
  • Notable examples in this case include Comanche Commander, Carrier Flagship, and Etienne (none at all, cannot be targeted either).
• Most towers whose main attacks rely on damage-over-time as their DPS, as damage-over-time is independent from any type of ordinary buff. They are, however, affected by Acidic Mixture Dip.
  • Glue Gunners can still be effective when given pierce buffs if they utilize X-0-X crosspath. This is especially effective on 2-0-4+, which can be used to glue multiple Bloons and stun them in place over and over.
    • NOTE: A bug currently means that Acidic Mixture Dip will apply a damage buff to Ceramics for 3+-X-X Glue Gunner's, but not for MOAB-class Bloons.
  • However, The Bloon Solver with Alch buffs is effective in races, since the buff increases its pierce and attack speed to ensure it coats every Bloon in glue.
• Towers who are primarily reliant on their ability to deal a large amount of damage in a single hit, such as MOAB Eliminator and First Strike Capability.
• Any tower that cannot accept Alch buffs at all, such as Banana Farms.
• Towers that are not high cash value, such as Wall of Fire. While alch buffing them may sound synergetic on paper, it is an expensive investment for a tower that costs less than the cumulative price of Berserker Brew.

Best Candidates for Alch Buffs (Non-Permabrew)

Primarily Mid-Game

• 2-0-2 Airburst Darts, 2-0-3 Triple Guns, 2-0-4 Armor Piercing Darts - Can extend anywhere on screen to shoot as many much stronger darts as possible, and its airburst attacks especially benefit from both the damage and pierce portions of brews.
• 3-0-2 Double Shot, 4-0-2 Bloonjitsu - Every angular spray of shurikens uses up one unit of Alch buff each, meaning that the Alch buff lifespan will last considerably long. As an added bonus, Caltrops on the ground will act as a source of stockpilable damage against both single-targets and for a bit of cleanup.
• Neva-Miss Targeting - Full-map range, ignores Line of Sight due to flying over any obstacles, and produces many accurate darts per attack at a moderate speed. Can be placed in awkward locations that normally would not be used by other towers due to its full map range.
• Operation: Dart Storm - Full-map range, ignores Line of Sight due to flying over any obstacles, and produces many darts per attack at a moderately fast speed, benefiting largely from 3-x-x and above Alchemist buffs.
• 2-0-3 Tack Sprayer and 2-0-4 Overdrive - Multiple tacks per attack but wears out only one Alch buff unit per attack.
• Recursive Cluster - Either crosspath will greatly benefit from Alch buffs, as it attacks relatively slowly but produces the majority of its power through secondary and tertiary explosions produced from singular bombs. 0-2-4 Recursive has a better synergy with Alch buff than 2-0-4, but 2-0-4 skips more layers than the first-mentioned and tends to sustain Acidic Mixture Dips more reliably. The main benefits with Alch buff for Recursive are the damage and attack speed buffs.
• M.O.A.R. Glaives - Like Recursive, either crosspath benefits from Alch buffs, but instead for reliability of shredding long groups of bloons. 4-2-0 has higher synergy with Alch buff but 4-0-2 shreds stronger bloons more reliably under the same conditions.

Mid-Game and Late-Game

• Spiked Balls - Attacks slowly but can retain full Alch buffs quite consistently. Plus, it can stockpile spikes, accumulating more Alch buff potential no matter where the Spike Factory is.
• 2-0-5 Sub Commander - Even though it attacks pretty quickly, its uptime is reasonably high with 4-2-0 Stronger Stimulant. Synergizes decently with Alch buff for better damage and can influence more Subs within range.
• 2-0-5 The Tack Zone - Synergizes well with its low range, reasonably fast attack speed, and multiple projectiles per attack.

Primarily Late-Game

• 0-x-5 Perma-Spike - Acidic Mixture Dip in particular allows for a 0-2-5 to reliably pop Leads and DDTs without at all needing MIB, assuming no freeze-based towers are on screen. Stronger Stimulant buff also increases the value of Perma-Spike's stockpiling potential by a large amount thanks to the attack speed portion in particular.
• 5-0-2 Grandmaster Ninja - Even when given many Shinobi Tactics, which makes it attack much faster but at the cost of wearing out Alch buffs much quicker, it is worth adding in an Alch buff to pop bloons more effectively and utilize all its pierce efficiently.
• Sky Shredder - Gains roughly +50% DPS just from the damage buff alone, plus much more for alternate attacks. It attacks not too quickly to wear out buffs so quickly but fast enough to maximize its high synergy with Alch buff.

Synergy Potential (Permabrew)

Good Synergies (Permabrew)

Everything based on non-Permabrew optimization strategies except:

• Attacks with multiple attacks per shot (i.e. Multiple Targeting ), which amplifies the Alch buff effects due to the tower possessing a higher number of different attacks.
  • An example of this is Robo Monkey and Sun Avatar.
• Towers with a small footprint, so that many more towers can be buffed within range without need of Support Chinook.
• Dark Knights and above, because they can teleport themselves away arbitrarily far to add room for more towers.
• Range-based buffing towers, as this can maximize buffing potential for the affected towers. This mainly applies to Shinobi Tactics and Poplust.
• Towers that produce many different attacks. The more attacks, the better the Permanent Brew's buffing value.
  • An example of this is Archmage, which rapidly attacks both bolts and fire breath.
• Any tower who benefits from permanent Acidic Mixture Dip. Acidic Mixture Dip acts as a permanent +1 damage to Ceramics and MOAB-class, as well as a lead-popping and DDT-popping source for sharp attacks.

It is useful to add Support Chinook in order to buff more than the towers within the Permanent Brew's immediate range. Moving it around anywhere on screen without selling or sacrificing it will retain its buffs.

Poor Synergies (Permabrew)

Everything based on non-Permabrew optimization strategies except:

• Towers that don't accept Alch buff, as this obviously wastes space for Permanent Brew. However, Permabrew can be moved around with the Support Chinook ability.

Best Candidates for Alch Buffs (Permabrew)

• Sun Avatar - Easily benefits from attacking very quickly and its multiple projectiles per shot.
• 2-0-4 Overdrive - More of them can be spammed within range and can deal enormous damage to single-targets once all of them receive the Permabrew buffs. Basically a +2 damage overall in practice.
• 2-0-5 The Tack Zone - Every tack contains Alch buffs from both brews and AMDs, resulting in a permanent +2 damage. Plus, the max internal attack speed certainly increases that synergy even further.
• Towers nearby Call To Arms and/or influenced by Overclock - Alch buffs wear off much quicker with any attack speed bonus, especially the aforementioned two.
• Most towers with "extremely expensive" upgrades - Chances are, extremely expensive towers scale Alch buff benefits much more than without it, and tend to have very high attack speed. Proportionate to its price, especially for a True Sun God or Vengeful True Sun God, Permanent Brew is worthy as a buffing source. An exception can be made with Super Mines, which doesn't benefit as proportionally with Permanent Brew, but still would appreciate from such a buffing source.
• 2-0-3 Dark Knights - They can be teleported elsewhere to give more room for many more Dark Knights.
• Shinobi Tactics spam and/or nearby Grandmaster Ninja - Less Alch dissynergy with neighboring Shinobis, plus better influence range for all Shinobis with the buff.

No Synergy with Alch Buffs

Some towers cannot accept Alch buffs at all. These include:

• Non-attacking towers (e.g. Monkey Villages without Primary Expertise, Banana Farms)
• Other Alchemists
• Glue Gunners without Corrosive Glue (AMD only)
• Etienne
• Psi (AMD only)
• Paragons
• Beast Handlers (only buffable through glitches)

Races

Alch Buffs are thrown instantly when upgraded, unless the target monkey is affected by an alch buff. This is taken advantage of in races by upgrading an alchemist to 300, selling it, then upgrading either the same tower under that buff, or a different tower. This is usually done on cheap towers, since later on it becomes unnecessary to buy and sell the alchemist.

Best Candidates for Alch Buffs (Berserker Brew buy and sell in Races)

• Spike-o-pult / Juggernaut
• Overdrive
• Ring of Fire
• Glaive Ricochet into M.O.A.R. Glaives
• Cluster Bombs into Recursive Cluster
• Bloontonium Reactor
• Wall of Fire / Dragon's Breath?

Version History

See Alchemist#Version History