Damage Types

Sample of towers with a variety of different damage types

Damage Type is the type of damage a certain attack inflicts. There are 10 different types of non-passive damage type: Normal, Acid, Sharp, Explosion, Cold, Glacier, Shatter, Energy, Plasma, and Fire. Certain damage types can be granted lead-popping or camo detection, but all types can affect a different set of bloon types between: Black, White, Purple, Lead, and Frozen.

This page will provide a condensed visual guide on how each tower and its upgrades behave in Bloons TD 6. Some intricate details about income generation and tower buffs may not be included; see the other tables on those pages instead.

Quick Reference

Type	Normal	Black	White	Lead	Purple	Frozen	Ghost	Shorthand
Normal	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	All
Acid	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	All
Fire	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Not Purple
Plasma	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Not Purple
Explosion	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Not Black
Shatter	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	No	Not Lead
Metal Glacier Freeze	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Not White
Glacier	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Not White or Lead
Metal Freeze	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Not White or Frozen
Energy	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes	Yes	Not Purple or Lead
Sharp	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No	No	Not Lead or Frozen
Cold	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes	No	Yes	Not White, Lead, or Frozen
Passive	No	No	No	No	No	No	No	None

Appearances of Damage Types

Type	BTD1	BTD2	BTD3	BTD4	BTD5 Flash	BTD5 Mobile	BTD6	BATTD	Bloons Pop!	Notes
Normal and Acid	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Introduced in BTD3 via Plasma Vision.
Plasma and Fire	No	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Many attacks that are classified as Plasma or Fire were effectively Normal before BTD6 introduced Purple Bloons.
Explosion	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Usual damage type of the Bomb Shooter.
Shatter	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Usually the damage type for Sonic Boom. Replaced Sharp in Bloons Pop!.
Metal Glacier Freeze	No	No	No	No	Yes	No	Limited	Yes	Yes	Common to BTD5 Flash and its other Flash spinoffs.
Glacier	No	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	No	No	Introduced in BTD6 to nerf Metal Freeze/Glacier and Metal Freeze.
Metal Freeze	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	The original damage type of the Ice Tower. Replaced by Metal Freeze/Glacier in Bloons TD 5 Flash and Flash spinoffs.
Energy	No	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	Yes	No	Split off from Shatter with the introduction of Purple Bloons.
Sharp	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Appeared in all games except Bloons Pop!. The majority of attacks in the series have this type.
Cold	No	No	No	No	No	No	Yes	No	No	Introduced in BTD6 to nerf the Metal Freeze/Glacier and Metal Freeze types.
Passive	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Introduced in BTD3 via Monkey Beacon, which cannot affect bloons initially.

Key

Main Damage Types

The following are arranged in order of priority from "strongest" to "weakest". Stronger types are prioritized over weaker types, specifically when crosspathed or buffed by other towers.

• Normal (Black, White, Lead, Purple, Frozen)
• Acid (Black, White, Lead, Purple, Frozen)
• Plasma (Black, White, Lead, Frozen)
• Fire (Black, White, Lead, Frozen)
• Explosion (White, Lead, Purple, Frozen)
• Shatter (Black, White, Purple, Frozen)
• Metal Glacier Freeze (Black, Purple, Lead, Frozen)
• Metal Freeze (Black, Purple, Lead)
• Glacier (Black, Purple, Frozen)
• Energy (Black, White, Frozen)
• Sharp (Black, White, Purple)
• Cold (Black, Purple)
• Passive (does not attack)

Popping

• Black
• White
• Lead
• Purple
• Frozen
• Camo

Type of Attack

• Attack Styles
  • Main Styles
    • Single Projectile
    • Area of Effect (AoE)
      • Partial Area of Effect
    • (X) Spray
      • (X) Orbital Spray
      • (X) Straight Spray
      • (X) Angular Spray
      • (X) Shotgun Spray
      • (X) Rotational Spray
    • Snipe
    • On-Track
      • Spike Pile
    • Laserbeam
  • Range
    • Tower Mobility
      • Path-Based Mobility
      • Self-Mobility
      • Aim-Based Mobility
      • Touch-Based Mobility
    • Extended Range
    • Full Map Range
    • Whole Screen
  • Target
    • Target Bloon(s)
      • Target Blimp(s)
    • Cannot Target Leads
    • Cannot Target Ceramics
    • Cannot Target Purples
  • Pierce
    • Impact
    • Infinite Pierce
  • Bloon Progress
    • Elite Defense
    • Wrath
  • Reacts to Lives
    • Retaliation
    • Vengeance
  • Secondary Styles
    • Contact Damage
    • Squeeze
    • Trap
    • Deploy Sub-Tower
    • Create Sea Mine
    • Burst
      • Shrapnel
    • Multiple Targeting
    • Other
• Attack Behavior
  • Initiation
    • Zone
    • Straight Movement
    • Curved Movement
    • Lobbing
    • Spawn On-Map
    • Undead Movement
  • Secondary
    • Erratic Movement
    • Seeking
      • Lightning Behavior
      • Aggressive Homing
      • Moderate Homing
      • Weak Homing
    • Ignores Line of Sight
      • Flying
      • Tall
    • Penetrates Blimps
    • Bounce
      • Side Bounce
  • Damage
    • Extra Damage
      • Extra Damage to Ceramics
      • Extra Damage to Blimps
      • Extra Damage to Fortified
      • Extra Damage to Leads
      • Extra Damage to Camos
      • Extra Damage to Stunned Bloons
      • Extra Damage to "Harmed" Bloons
      • Extra Damage to Boss Bloons
    • Downgrade Layer
    • Instakill Bloon(s)
      • Instakill Blimp(s)
      • Red Bloon Transform
  • Miscellaneous
    • Involves pure RNG
    • Targets Tower(s)
    • Discount
      • Commerce Discount
    • Generates Bonus Income
      • Generates Bonus Income Per Pop
    • Generates Bonus Lives
    • Heals Lives

Status Effects

• On-Bloon Effects
  • Burn (bloons)
    • Burn (blimps)
  • Acid
  • Standard Glue
    • Corrosive Glue
    • Dissolver Glue
    • Liquefying Glue
    • Solver Glue
  • Freeze (bloons)
    • Freeze (blimps)
  • Stun (bloons)
    • Stun (blimps)
  • Radioactive
  • Grow-Blocked
  • Debuff
  • Concoction
  • Sticky Bomb
  • Laser Shock
  • Icicles
  • Lead To Gold
  • Rubber To Gold
  • Trojanned
  • Bloon Bleed
  • Shardable
  • Other
• Property-Stripping
  • Decamo
    • Universal Decamo
    • Bloon-Only Decamo
  • Degrow
  • Defortify (bloons)
  • Defortify (blimps)
• Slowdown and Knockback
  • Slowdown (bloons)
    • Slowdown (blimps)
    • Slowdown Stuck (bloons or blimps)
    • Sabotage
  • Knockback
    • Press
    • Shove
  • Blowback
  • Other

See the below navigation box for pages about specific Damage Types.

Towers and Upgrades

Below is a list of damage types, special popping powers, attack style, attack behavior, and status effects applied to each attack. The only major statistics measured is damage to bloons and how attacks behave, and usually will not take into account extra attack speed, pierce, or range (see the Advanced Popology series for specific additional statistics of each upgrade in list form) unless they make a significant role at changing the behavior of the tower. For pierce, only ones with either always exactly 1 pierce (Impact) and infinite pierce (Infinite Pierce) are mentioned. For range, only extended range (Extended Range), full-map range (Full Range), and global range are mentioned, which otherwise should be assumed as only within range.

Bloons TD 6

Click on any of the links below to see tables of damage types for each category.

• Primary
• Military
• Magic
• Support
• Heroes
• Temple Sacrifices

Characters and Allies in Bloons Adventure Time TD

Unlike Bloons TD 6, Bloons Adventure Time TD is more transparent about the existence and users of damage types, with many characters having explicit damage types listed in their information screens. However, there are glaring errors in some of these screens. Since BATTD towers primarily specialize in one damage type across their entire upgrade tree, the BATTD damage types list will be sorted by type and not tower and upgrade.

Normal

• All of Princess Bubblegum's attacks
  • This includes the Soda and Mints ability, despite its upgrade description stating that it does "explosive damage".
• Flame Princess's ability to transform a bloon into a Flamebit
• Attacks boosted by the Plasma Goggles ability
• Supermonkey's Disarming Charisma
• Finn's Flying Kick

Fire

• Flame Princess's attacks except her Flamebit transformation (although contact with the Flamebit itself deals fire damage)

Sharp

• Finn, Warrior Bubblegum, Marceline, and Jake's attacks generally count as Sharp.
• Supermonkey and Commander Cassie's base attacks are Sharp. However, Supermonkey loses this damage type upon upgrading to Laser Eyes and beyond, and Commander can gain extra non-sharp attacks or even turn them Normal via Bloontonium Darts.

Energy

• Martin's laser guns
• Supermonkey's Laser Eyes

Plasma

• Supermonkey's Plasma Eyes, Sun Avatar, and Sun God attacks
• Carl the Gem's laser attack

Metal Freeze

• Ice Monkey's default non-damaging freeze attack

Metal Freeze/Glacier

• Ice King's freeze attacks
• Ice Monkey's Snap Freeze

Explosion

• All of C4 Charlie's attacks
• Commander Cassie's missiles and warheads
• The Missile trinket-based attack has this damage type against all types of bloons except one: when hitting a DDT, the missile suddenly switches to Shatter and thus can pop DDTs when the missile-armed character equips something permitting damage against Lead Bloons, ignoring the anti-explosive properties of DDTs.

FAQ

Within Bloons Wiki, the use of "Damage Type" refers to the whole system of how towers function in a defense. The complexity of this system means that there will be questions about possible confusions over the normally unfamiliar system.

Q1) What is a Damage Type?

A "Damage Type" is an attribute of a specific attack style, a specific attack behavior, or a certain status effect applied onto a bloon.

The entire Damage Types system is a system designed to categorize how each tower operates. While not all towers may directly damage bloons or otherwise harm them, each tower plays a role for the defense. Identifying the technical aspects of how the towers each play a role in the defense is one possible alternate approach to strategy.

Focus towards how each tower and their upgrades operate is the key with Damage Types. The broad identifications of each Damage Type is tagged to each tower that practices such attack styles and attack behaviors. Highlight each icon (on Desktop versions of the wiki) to look up specific details of certain attributes for a given tower or upgrade.

Q2) I thought Damage Types was just about simple damage types of the specific attack, like whether it is Sharp, Explosive, Normal, and so on?

On Bloons Wiki, Damage Types was initially aimed at simply describing those types of attributes, but seeing as many more attacks in Bloons TD 6 have complex sets of conditions, for example Fireball's on-hit versus Fireball's explosion, there is need to expand upon the Damage Types system. Elsewhere, "Damage Types" may refer to just the simple damage types as prior mentioned.

Similarly, as the Damage Types system evolved on Bloons Wiki, the need to expand upon the original intent of expanding the Damage Types system, that being visually guiding how towers and upgrades function using a system of different "elements", has become more and more of a vital aspect to this Damage Types system. Expansion along Tower Buffs and Income Generation has been opened to give way to detailing how buff-related sources and income-relating sources operate in a defense. The whole idea of the Damage Types system is to allow the perception of an element-like approach, refining each aspect within a tower into individual parts, sort of like separating different mixtures into pure substances in a science lab.

Q3) What is the point of this complex system?

There is a niche in Bloons Wiki where certain players would find it worthwhile to perceive different towers and their upgrades as unique mixtures of various elements. It can be interesting to find out the specifics of how each tower and their upgrades will operate for a defense. Custom challenges can be made to eliminate specific types of towers, a common instance being those "find the camo detection" or "find the lead-popping" challenges.

Having a comprehensive list of Damage Types split as elements can help both challenge creators and challengers to enjoy challenges better. For challenge creators, having tables of Damage Types per tower and hero can help eliminate possibilities for "cheesing" (unintentional trivialization) of a challenge. For challengers, having those same tables can be useful for determining possibilities for potential solutions without outright spoiling the answers to each challenge, at least if the challenge is complex enough such that simply knowing an individual fact is insufficient.

Trivia

• According to Ninja Kiwi's Version 25.1 patch notes, the default damage type is Normal whenever damage type corruption occurs. Despite this, Sharp remains the most common damage type.
  • It could be said that when each tower is initially made, they have the Normal damage Type. As the tower begins to develop, Ninja Kiwi gradually reduces the types of bloons that tower can affect.
• Sniper Monkeys in the Flash versions of the BTD5 generation can pop Frozen regardless of upgrades, and therefore are of type Shatter . In Mobile, however, they do not, and are of Sharp type.
  • The Flash versions are inconsistent with the description of Full Metal Jacket, which describes the popping of Leads and Frozen.
• The Acidic Mixture Dip upgrade allows sharp damage to pop lead bloons, but not frozen bloons, technically making it a new damage type.