Ice Monkey (BTDB2)/Strategies/Countermeasures

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The Ice Monkey is a tower that pops and freeze bloons in place. Because of the ice sheet that they create, Ice Monkeys prevents attacks that have the sharp damage type from damaging affected bloons, creating a negative synergy with them and Ice Monkeys without upgrades. Ice Monkeys additionally cannot affect white, camo, zebra, and lead bloons as a base tower and has low and range and attack speed, in exchange for high pierce and the ability to stall bloons.

General

Attributes	Ice Monkey countermeasures
Role	Ice Monkeys in the offense are mostly supporting towers but can be pseudo-DPS towers.
Attack Speed	Ice monkeys are typically very slow towers, with only average attack speed being their best. Absolute zero can increase the attack speed of all Ice Monkeys for ten seconds.
Damage	The attacks the Ice Monkeys do typically don't do a lot of damage. Even Icicle Impale does only average damage to blimps even before health ramping begins.
Pierce	Ice Monkeys have a ton of pierce even as a base tower, at 40 pierce. With Path 2 upgrades, the pierce of Ice Monkeys only increases.
Range	Ice Monkeys typically have a terrible range, even worse than Tack Shooter. However, with a large Radius with Artic Wind and above, the Ice Monkeys range is slightly above average relative to the rest of the cast.
Support	Ice Monkeys has one buffing option and two debuffing options available: Absolute Zero and Embrittlement/Super Brittle and Arctic Wind, respectively. Absolute Zero buffs all Ice Monkeys' speed for 10 seconds. Starting with Embrittlement, all affect bloons will temporarily let Sharp attacks and freeze attacks to pop bloons and permanently lose camo and regrow properties, on top of the fact that affected bloons also take +1 damage from all attacks. Arctic wind debuffs all regular-class bloons (barring white and zebra bloons) movement speed by 50% in range.
Power	Even with the Ice Monkey's low base cost, Ice Monkey has a situational early game due to its low range but in exchange for the power to effectively pop all bloons due to the 0-1-2 crosspath if enough range is utilized. It has a good mid-game with Ice Shards and Icicles, a good late-game with Super Brittle for large damage debuff to bloons and Icicle Impale for DDT rushes.

Upgrade-specific

Path 1

Upgrade	Ice Monkey countermeasures
Permafrost	Bloons affected by this upgrade moves slowly permanently after getting unfrozen and until the current layer is popped. Gives more time for the defense to pop bloons and allows the bloons to group up for any bloons that Ice Monkey missed. An Ice Monkey with this upgrade may still attack pretty slowly, which can be taken advantage of if not supported by other towers.
Cold Snap	Cold Snap allows the Ice Monkey to detect Camo and pop Leads. It is usually used in combination with an Upper Path 3 Ice Monkey to counter general types of bloons without needing additional support, especially Icicle Impale to counter DDTs. Opting for Cold Snap loses opportunity for other paths.
Ice Shards	Ice Shards can shred lots of bloons with its shards, provided there is another tower to pop the Frozen Bloons. In addition to the small amount of extra range, it can decimate a rush if it times properly. On most maps, which often lack overlapping corners, a very fast rush such as Grouped Purples may get past Ice Shards due to its slow attack speed. Regrow Rainbows are often a weakness to Ice Shards due to being unable to apply the shardable status effect immediately through them.
Embrittlement	Embrittlement temporarily increases the damage by +1 for 3 seconds that bloons take from all attacks, allows Sharp attacks to affect frozen bloons and lead bloons (mainly for DDT bloons), and permanently strips camo and regrow properties off of and bloons that have them. Most players tend to use it as a support to weaken MOAB-class bloons and break up rushes alongside an existing defense. Players who rely on Embrittlement for decamo may be vulnerable to large sustained rushes of Camo Bloons, particularly due to its high cost. Embrittlement is much stronger than a normal Ice Shards at decimating a rush due to inflicting vulnerability to bloon properties; when paired with additional defense to support its slow damage, it can inflict a lot of damage on its own too.
Super Brittle	Super Brittle is an expensive support option that greatly enhances the duration and amplification of the bloon vulnerability effects, particularly the damage debuff against bloons. It gives +4 damage debuff instead of +1, making the biggest difference against single-target blimps. Despite its incredible support, it can still be easily pierce-capped with large quantities of bloons, such as Tight ZOMGs.

Path 2

Upgrade	Ice Monkey countermeasures
Enhanced Freeze	All attacks are faster and freeze for longer. In the early game, expect this upgrade with Re-freeze as this will allow the Ice monkey to permanently lock bloons in place that isn't white, zebra, or MOAB-bloons. Sufficient attack speed buffs (from other upgrades or external means) will be able to produce the same results with this upgrade as long as this tower has Re-Freeze.
Deep Freeze	The freeze effect soaks through another layer. Useful against pink and yellow bloons, if the Ice monkey does freeze them, as this allows the effect bloons to not zip immediately past the ice monkey if the frozen bloon gets attacked. Only really noticeable in the early game as in mid to late game, towers attack too fast and can most likely pop froze bloons at that stage.
Artic Wind	Gains 60 pierce, up to 100. Gains an aura of coldness that slows down all bloons that aren't white or zebra (both without MIB), and MOAB-class bloons. Also freezes nearby water in range which allows land towers to be placed on water. Most commonly seen on Docks if trying to utilize the freeze-water effect for land towers but can be useful anywhere if to utilize its slowdown.
Snowstorm	Gains more range and an ability that freezes all bloons for 6 seconds except leads, camo (unless given a way to pop them, and leads are completely immune to the ability unless given lead popping power), white bloons, zebra bloons, and slows MOAB-class bloons which are affected for 3 seconds.
Absolute Zero	Has triple pierce, up to 300, the ability now affects bloons for 10 seconds for all bloons types (though MOAB-class bloons are still just slowed down), and all ice monkeys gain +50% attack speed for all attacks for the duration of the ability. Additionally, the aura produced by this monkey is now 60% instead of 50%. Cooldown is now 20 seconds instead of 30 seconds (All of this is from BTD6 so check if this is still the case.)

Path 3

Upgrade	Ice Monkey countermeasures
Larger Radius	Increases the range of the Ice Monkey by +7. Commonly seen with path 2 in conjunction with its next upgrade to permanently chip away at bloons and as an early stepping stone for Cyro Cannon.
Re-Freeze	This Ice Monkey can refreeze bloons that are already frozen, refreshing the duration of the freeze. However, it needs sufficient attack speed to actually do this (whether that be from middle path or external buffs). Re-Freeze is typically used as a crosspath with Enhanced Freeze for a permastall, though it can be used to keep bloons in place.
Cyro Cannon	Cryo Cannon trades its radial blasts for a more traditional tower with a much larger range, faster attack speed, and +1 damage. This helps it specialize at catching fast-moving bloons, enough to deal adequately with most non-White bloon rushes. It can also catch Ceramics well too. Due to how the Cryo Cannon attacks, bloons are still capable of sneaking by an improperly aimed Cryo Cannon, as it has less pierce and a smaller blast radius.
Icicles	Icicles now implant Icicles onto bloons and the effect lasts for 2 seconds. During that time, any bloons that touch affected bloons receive 2 damage, and can hit up to 3 bloons. The bloon must be damaged by the blasts to implant icicles. If an opponent has only an Icicles for damage, a White or Zebra rush can often kill them.
Icicle Impale	Icicle Impale can now target and damage MOAB-class bloons, dealing 50 damage to them and slowing them to incredibly slow speeds, making them pitifully easy to react. Icicle Impale's strong point is its incredible slowdown to DDTs, particularly if it can damage them, which lets affected blimps slow down. Typical DDT rushes including Grouped DDTs cannot simply overwhelm a properly utilized Icicle Impale. It is possible to overload Icicle Impale's pierce by blocking it with large quantities of other MOAB-class bloons.

Crosspath-specific

Crosspath	Ice Monkey countermeasures
0-1-2	As previously stated, Re-Freeze with the Enhanced Freeze crosspath allows the Ice Monkey to permanently stall bloons in its radius until they are fully popped which for such a cheap price, is really cost efficient.

Synergy-specific

First	Second	Ice Monkey countermeasures
Embrittlement	Overdrive	The Embrittlement + Overdrive combo is enough to deal with MOABs and BFBs effectively, due to Embrittlement's debuff on blimps helping Overdrive maximize damage, and Embrittlement cleaning up bloons. An opponent with this combo before ZOMGs are unlocked is overdefending. If this happens, keep building income instead of rushing, if their positionings are solid.

Other Advice

• If you see the opponent's Ice Monkeys having their respective unique cosmetics, the opponent has unlocked all upgrades for Ice Monkey. In that case, prepare for all possible upgrades.

See also

• Ice Monkey Strategies
  • General Strategy
  • Optimization Strategy
  • Countermeasures Strategy

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