In Bloons TD 6, it is important to choose the best crosspathing for a specific tower in order to receive the best benefits out of that tower type. Towers have special roles to play for each stage of the game. The Bomb Shooter in its core is a source of area damage by use of explosive projectiles.
Bomb Shooters shoot bombs that explode upon impact. It is slow, but its explosions affect in a wide, circular area (Area of Effect). Initially, its explosions have a small blast radius, but certain upgrades can expand the coverage of its blasts. The Bomb Shooter's base range is decent, but it is not normally an important feature for this tower. Bomb Shooters generally attack quite slowly, but they pack a lot of pierce especially with its Tier 3+ upgrades. Path 1 centers the Bomb Shooter dealing high damage, eventually being able to stun bloons including MOAB-class in a wide blast radius. Path 2 focuses on popping MOAB-class bloons. Path 3 focuses on effective cleanup, by increasing range and increasing blast coverage via secondary projectiles.
0-0-0: Can be used as a cheap lead-popping option. Although not as reliable compared to a 0-0-0 Alchemist, a 0-0-0 Bomb Shooter is the easiest and cheaper option to choose.
1-0-0: Can be bought for an upgraded Bomb Shooter to hit multiple Leads more reliably, because its explosions gain a greater blast radius.
0-1-0: Increases attack speed. Slightly increases its reliability to hit fast bloons like yellows and pinks.
0-0-1: It now has larger range.
1-1-0: Combines bigger splash radius with increased attack speed
1-0-1: It may have more range and a bigger blast radius, but that is usually not very helpful because it may miss easily.
2-0-0: Explosions now deals 2 damage and pop much more bloons.
0-2-0: Further increases its fire rate and projectile speed, making it an excellent choice for catching faster bloons far more reliably.
0-0-2: While its fragments are quite weak, the explosions also gain innate black-popping power, making this crosspath somewhat useful in the early-game. The 0-0-2 Bomb is normally for upgrading to 0-0-3 Cluster Bombs.
2-1-0: Basically just a Bigger Bombs with extra attack speed.
2-0-1: A Heavy Bombs with more range
1-2-0: Basically just a Missile Launcher with the extra blast radius and pierce of Bigger Bombs.
1-0-2: As frag bombs with more pierce and radius but nothing change to fragments.
2-2-0: Combines the increase in damage and blast radius and even greater attack speed
2-0-2: Increase pierce, damage and blast radius with the addition of frags. The frags don't get increased stats.
0-2-1: A 0-2-2 with out the frag bombs
0-1-2: Bomb increase in attack speed with frag attacks.
0-2-2: This lower-tier Bomb maximizes the frag potential by releasing frags more often. It is weak, however, and it is generally more worth just getting 0-0-3 instead or just getting 0-2-0 and some other defense.
3-0-0: Really Big Bombs blasts deal big damage over a wide area, additionally inflicting distance-based knockback (Press) in the process. Normally, the Really Big Bombs upgrade is merely used as a stepping stone to Bloon Impact. If the extra early mid-game damage is worthy, both crosspaths offer a benefit to its damage output, Path 2 granting greater consistency for the high damage explosions and Path 3 giving fragments that deal lots of damage. Placing Really Big Bombs along a bend to maximize its large explosion radius and damage is recommended.
3-1-0: Provides greater attack speed to apply its high damage explosions more often.
3-2-0: Even more attack speed to apply its high damage explosions more often.
3-0-1: Reaches bloons from further, but this is often wasteful for the Really Big Bombs, as it may sometimes miss bloons from afar. In addition, this range boost is not necessarily useful for its attack, as Really Big Bombs is designed to thin out strong waves of bloons, not apply wide-range cleanup as Cluster Bombs would do, and the extra attack speed is a much more useful asset for this purpose.
3-0-2: Adds fragments to each explosion. Fragments deal much more damage, matching the new 3 damage value the base explosion gets, and projectile count increases from 8 to 12. While consistency of shots are reduced, its damage output can make up for that downside. Do note that fragments lack enough pierce to clean up waves of weaker bloons but still enough to chip away against stronger bloons.
4-0-0: Bloon Impact stuns affected bloons with explosions. By stunning bloons, it gives other defenses more time to handle the stunned bloons. The stun effects are the greatest assets for the Bloon Impact, and as such crosspathing with Path 2 is recommended to make the most of its stunning potential.
4-1-0: Provides greater attack speed to apply its high damage explosions and stuns more often. If given Jungle Drums, it can permanently stun bloons by hitting the same bloon consecutively, but 4-2-0 is still better because of handling stronger bloons quicker, especially Super Ceramics.
4-2-0: The 4-2-0 Bloon Impact is fully capable of fully soloing a Super Ceramic when given sufficient time and supported by Striker Jones level 5+ or a Monkey Intelligence Bureau.
4-0-1: Reaches bloons from further, but this is often wasteful for the Bloon Impact, as it may sometimes miss bloons from afar. In addition, this range boost is not necessarily useful for its attack, as Bloon Impact is meant to stun from a closer range, and 4-2-0 Impact already has a generous range.
4-0-2: Adds fragments to each explosion. While these fragments deal more damage and projectile count increases from 12 to 16, these fragments sacrifice the greater explosion attack rate, and fragments lack enough pierce to clean up waves of weaker bloons. This crosspath trades permastuns for better mid-game cleanup.
5-0-0: Bloon Crush is just like Bloon Impact but it deals 4x more damage and can stun MOAB-class bloons and inflict distance-based knockback (Press) against MOAB-class bloons. It can also pop Black properties including visible DDTs. Regardless of crosspathing, Bloon Crush stuns bloons for long enough that any consecutive hits will permanently stun them. Both crosspaths can stun bloons and blimps longer than it can attack again, allowing for consecutive permastunning, although Path 2 crosspathing helps for the more consistent stun, especially when countering greater clusters of blimps and bloons.
5-1-0: A slight increase in attack speed for faster stuns and more knockback.
5-2-0: The superior option due to refreshing stuns much faster, especially once its explosions begin to hit the pierce cap and would subsequently overwhelm a Bloon Crush.
5-0-1: This crosspath is generally considered wasteful because Bloon Crush is supposed to keep blimps and bloons within the same location. The extra range is hardly meaningful.
5-0-2: Bloon Crush fragments are much, much stronger than the explosions themselves. This allows for a much stronger cleanup in exchange for missing out on faster stun refreshment. Bloon Crush can still get overwhelmed by having a lot of bloons, and because fragments gain a huge pierce and damage buff in addition to large amounts of projectiles, 5-0-2 can be useful in some cases.
0-3-0: MOAB Maulers pack with high grouped MOAB-class damage for a cost-effective price (Extra Damage to Blimps). It is usually better to go straight for this upgrade and then crosspath it, rather than to pick a crosspath and then upgrade to MOAB Mauler. Crosspathing is useful but not essential to make use of its maximum MOAB-class popping power.
1-3-0: The extra blast radius is helpful for the MOAB Mauler to hit more blimps per shot. Primary Mentoring allows a group of maulers to buy this upgrade for free.
2-3-0: If blimps are very dense, 2-3-0 is a worthy crosspath to go for. But in most cases, spamming 1-3-0 Maulers near a Primary Mentoring is better, as Maulers are designed to counter groups of MOAB-class bloons rather than dense clumps of normal bloons.
0-3-1: Useful if Maulers need to shoot further, which can be handy on certain maps. As with 1-3-0, Primary Mentoring allows this crosspath to be bought for free.
0-3-2: Gives a small range boost compared to 0-3-1, but the fragment attacks deal insignificant damage to MOAB-class or Ceramics.
0-4-0: If used only for the ability, this crosspath is useful. Crosspathing does not affect the ability at all, but crosspathing helps boost its improved main attack damage against both MOAB-class and Ceramics.
1-4-0: The extra blast radius is helpful for the MOAB Assassin's main attack to hit more blimps per shot. MOAB Assassins deal greater damage to Ceramics too, so this upgrade can help against that too as a bonus.
2-4-0: If blimps are very dense, 2-4-0 is a worthy crosspath to go for. Also applies to Ceramics to a lesser extent.
0-4-1: Useful if Assassins need to shoot further, which can be handy on certain maps. MOAB Assassins have plenty of range already, however.
0-4-2: Gives a small range boost compared to 0-4-1, but the fragment attacks are insignificant.
0-5-0: If used only for the ability, this crosspath is useful. Crosspathing does not affect the ability at all. As with Assassin, crosspathing helps its main attack better utilize its improved MOAB-class damage.
1-5-0: Like MOAB Assassin's main attack improvements, but to optimize the huge MOAB-class damage bonus.
2-5-0: Just like 1-5-0 MOAB Assassin but for even denser clumps of MOAB-class.
0-5-1: Like 0-4-1 MOAB Assassin, the extra range is helpful to let MOAB Eliminator hit its higher-damage missiles from longer distance.
0-5-2: Frag attacks are insignificant, but MOAB Eliminator already pops Black by default anyway, making this crosspath merely a very minor increase in DPS.
0-0-3: Secondary clusters produced by each bomb combined with the primary explosion demolish weak dense groups of bloons, all for a rather low cost. Crosspathing is beneficial but not vital for Cluster Bombs. Path 1 offers superior grouped damage, while Path 2 catches faster bloons better and has a better synergy with buffs. Note that crosspaths are capable of directly affecting the clusters too.
1-0-3: More explosion radius and a considerable increase of pierce for each cluster.
2-0-3: Generally the go-to upgrade for the much greater pierce and a bonus +1 damage per explosion including its secondary explosions.
0-1-3: Attacks faster, thereby creating clusters at a faster rate too. 0-2-3 further improves on this.
0-2-3: Attacks faster, thereby creating clusters at a faster rate too, but 2-0-3 has the superior damage output. There is a greater synergy of 0-2-3 Cluster Bombs with Alch buff, but 2-0-3 with Alch buff is still better for greater breakdown of stronger bloons and the faster attack rate. 0-2-3 can catch Yellows and Pinks better, however.
0-0-4: In addition to a flat increase in damage, Recursive Clusters can regularly produce tertiary explosions. Every second shot from Recursive allows tertiary clusters to be produced, which possess extremely high pierce. By this point, Recursive Cluster should've gotten a crosspath choice already, unless refraining from it for challenge purposes. Upgrade it to Path 1 for more pierce and damage, or Path 2 for more attack speed.
1-0-4: More explosion radius and a considerable increase of pierce for each cluster. Here, the explosion radius matters the most, as this mainly affects the tertiary explosions.
2-0-4: Generally the go-to upgrade for the much greater pierce and a bonus +1 damage per explosion including its secondary and tertiary explosions. This is far the best option to deal with grouped ceramics. 2-0-4 offers a greater breakdown of more bloons due to its much larger pierce, although it attacks slower than 0-2-4 and has a generally lower synergy with buffs. Interestingly, the 3 damage is actually competitive versus other Recursive crosspaths, as this is enough to bypass the black-immune layers of Rainbows.
0-1-4: Improves the rate of creating its tertiary clusters too. 0-2-4 further improves on this.
0-2-4: Improves the rate of creating its tertiary clusters too, to a maximum degree internally. While 2-0-4 has the superior damage output in raw DPS, there is a greater synergy of 0-2-4 Recursive with Alch buff. Despite this, the only situation in which an alched buffed 0-2-4 is better than an alched buffed 2-0-4 is against a single target, where Recursive struggles anyways. 0-2-4 triggers tertiary clusters more often, and occasionally this part makes it better than 2-0-4 in the case where groups of bloons move quickly.
0-0-5: Bomb Blitz usually needs a crosspath to function as a damage source, but if used for only the passive ability then a 0-0-5 Bomb Blitz is still useful. Note that the passive ability is completely unaffected by crosspathing. Still, the crosspathing for Bomb Blitz really improves its DPS potential from the extra damage its ordinary explosive attacks can inflict.
1-0-5: More explosion radius and a considerable increase of pierce for each cluster. Extra blast radius shouldn't matter because it already reliably pops bloons it is close to and covers a wide explosion radius via consistent tertiary explosions per shot. On top of this, tertiary clusters have a very high pierce already. Path 2 is better for Bomb Blitz as a DPS option.
2-0-5: It isn't a "useless" crosspath, but it is less efficient DPS compared to the 0-2-5 for reasons explained in 1-0-5 plus the fact that +1 damage doesn't scale as well compared to the +66% total attack speed.
0-1-5: Improves the rate of creating all explosions, including secondary and tertiary clusters. 0-2-5 further improves on this.
0-2-5: Because each individual explosion deals much more damage, the attack speed bonus scales more than the +1 damage. Adding Missile Launcher offers +66% total attack speed compared to not getting any Path 2 upgrade.
Strategy[]
Bomb Shooter crosspathing usually depends on a basis of separate use cases.
Area of Effect). Initially, its explosions have a small blast radius, but certain upgrades can expand the coverage of its blasts. The Bomb Shooter's base range is decent, but it is not normally an important feature for this tower. Bomb Shooters generally attack quite slowly, but they pack a lot of pierce especially with its Tier 3+ upgrades. Path 1 centers the Bomb Shooter dealing high damage, eventually being able to stun bloons including MOAB-class in a wide blast radius. Path 2 focuses on popping MOAB-class bloons. Path 3 focuses on effective cleanup, by increasing range and increasing blast coverage via secondary projectiles.
Press) in the process. Normally, the Really Big Bombs upgrade is merely used as a stepping stone to Bloon Impact. If the extra early mid-game damage is worthy, both crosspaths offer a benefit to its damage output, Path 2 granting greater consistency for the high damage explosions and Path 3 giving fragments that deal lots of damage. Placing Really Big Bombs along a bend to maximize its large explosion radius and damage is recommended.
