Monkey Ace (BTDB2)/Strategies/General

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This page is a general guide for Monkey Ace. For more advanced guides, see Monkey Ace (BTDB2)/Strategies/Optimization

Monkey Ace

Monkey Ace is a fixed-path flying tower in Bloons TD Battles 2. Monkey Ace's various upgrades make it excel at cleaning up bloons for an effective cost. Monkey Aces initially start off with volleys of darts in a 360° formation, and are shot regularly from them during flight. They can also gain additional attacks such as bombs and missiles, and some attacks can seek or deal widespread damage.

The aim of this article is a general guide for using the Monkey Ace. It summarizes how to effectively use Monkey Ace without going into too much intricate detail about meta strategy.

Base Tower

• Cost: $700
• Unlock: 75

Base Monkey Ace shoots volleys of 8 darts in a 360° formation, each dart popping up to 5 bloons. It flies along a fixed path and all its attacks ignore Line of Sight. By default, it flies clockwise in a circular path around its base. An Ace can choose a selection of different flight patterns to travel, and it can also fly in the opposite direction with Reverse Flight. Monkey Ace shoots darts seemingly randomly, given that they are shot from the Ace itself, making positioning important for the Monkey Ace.

Upgrades

Rapid Fire

• Cost: $550
• Path: 1
• Tier: 1
• Unlock: Default

Rapid Fire increases attack speed of the Ace by +33%, or +66% for bombs from Path 2. The extra attack speed increases reliability of the Ace by making attacks more consistently, despite potentially timing each shot differently compared to not having that upgrade. This attack speed upgrade is especially beneficial for optimizing DPS of an already upgraded Ace.

Lots More Darts

• Cost: $650
• Path: 1
• Tier: 2
• Unlock: Default

Lots More Darts increases the number of darts per volley from 8 to 12, or increases pierce of Spectre darts by +25%. Compared to the rest of the Ace, Lots More Darts is quite an expensive upgrade, but proves optimal for Neva-Miss Targeting.

Fighter Plane

• Cost: $1,000
• Path: 1
• Tier: 3
• Unlock: TBA XP

Fighter Plane makes the Ace fly faster and allows it to shoot anti-MOAB missiles that home at MOAB-class bloons and deal big damage to them. In essence, it is like a slow-firing MOAB Mauler with global range. In practicality, it works best against early MOABs.

Operation: Dart Storm

• Cost: $3,000
• Path: 1
• Tier: 4
• Unlock: TBA XP

Operation: Dart Storm further increases the number of darts per volley from 12 to 16, greatly increases attack speed and pierce of the darts, and increases attack speed of the anti-MOAB missile attack and deals higher damage per missile.

Sky Shredder

• Cost: $40,000
• Path: 1
• Tier: 5
• Unlock: TBA XP

Sky Shredder greatly increases damage for its darts and missiles, doubles dart count from 16 to 32, and darts attack much faster. Altogether, these improved weapons are effective against small to medium amounts of weaker blimps and bloons, especially when given external supports that optimize them.

Exploding Pineapple

• Cost: $200
• Path: 2
• Tier: 1
• Unlock: Default

Exploding Pineapple lets the Monkey Ace regularly drop pineapples on the ground based on the position of the Ace. Pineapples are very cheap options for bolstering group-popping in the early rounds, particularly Grouped Reds and Grouped Blues. For the best results, ensure that the Ace has plenty of track coverage in its current flight path.

Spy Plane

• Cost: $350
• Path: 2
• Tier: 2
• Unlock: Default

Spy Plane allows the Monkey Ace to detect camos and deal extra damage to them. Compared to most upgrades that provide camo detection, this one is quite expensive.

Bomber Ace

• Cost: $900
• Path: 2
• Tier: 3
• Unlock: TBA XP

Bomber Ace replaces sporatically placed exploding pineapples with arrays of high-damage bombs that only target paths. Bomber Ace is particularly strong for its price, provided the Ace properly times its shots. By having multiple Bomber Aces that cover a wide amount of track at all times, they excel against various grouped bloon types, including Ceramics.

Ground Zero

• Cost: $14,000
• Path: 2
• Tier: 4
• Unlock: TBA XP

Ground Zero adds an ability that drops a nuke that deals 700 damage to an arbitrarily high number of bloons on screen, with a cooldown of 45 seconds. Its ability can be used to wipe out lots of weak bloons on screen at once on demand. Watch out for the deployment cooldown after activating the nuke; while the deployment cooldown is brief, improperly managed Ground Zero ability micro can cost the game. Ground Zero's main bombs also gain more damage, although not nearly as significant in this game compared to its nuke.

Tsar Bomba

• Cost: $30,000
• Path: 2
• Tier: 5
• Unlock: TBA XP

Tsar Bomba increases damage of its nuke to 3000, stuns all survivors on screen, and decreases the nuke ability cooldown to 35 seconds. The biggest benefit of Tsar Bomba is being able to reliably one-shot up to Fortified BFBs on most rounds and stun surviving ZOMGs and DDTs. Like Ground Zero, Tsar Bomba has a deployment cooldown for its ability.

Sharper Darts

• Cost: $450
• Path: 3
• Tier: 1
• Unlock: Default

Sharper Darts increases pierce of darts from 5 to 8, in addition to improved dropped bomb pierce. Darts become more reliable at popping large amounts of bloons on screen.

Centered Path

• Cost: $300
• Path: 3
• Tier: 2
• Unlock: Default

Centered Path adds a new flight path that sets the Ace around a fixed circular loop anywhere on screen. The new flight path defaults around the center of the map, but can be changed to a more favorable location at will.

Neva-Miss Targeting

• Cost: $2,200
• Path: 3
• Tier: 3
• Unlock: TBA XP

Neva-Miss Targeting lets all darts home at bloons, plus extra projectile lifespan and projectile speed to take advantage of the homing darts, on top of a pierce increase from 8 to 12. Neva-Miss Targeting is quite accurate, making it reliable at cleanup, to the point that it can excels in the early-game while still working well into the mid-game. As it produces many projectiles and takes advantage of them well, buffs (e.g. Alch buff) work very well with Neva-Miss Targeting.

Spectre

• Cost: $20,000
• Path: 3
• Tier: 4
• Unlock: 19,000 XP

Spectre shoots alternating darts and bombs very quickly, exchanging the homing volleys of darts from its predecessor. The single volley of darts and bomb always defaults on First. Both projectiles deal lots of damage to spaced and grouped bloons alike, although Spectre evolves to a grouped rush specializer rather than a spaced rush specializer. An expensive option for dealing with huge clumps of bloons, but can be quite inaccurate overall.

Flying Fortress

• Cost: $75,000
• Path: 3
• Tier: 5
• Unlock: TBA XP

Flying Fortress increases damage of its darts and bombs, attacks much faster, pops all bloon types, and shoots three volleys of alternating dart-and-bomb attacks. Darts gain a massive amount of damage to MOAB-class, making Flying Fortress excel greatly as expensive single-target damage. It needs substantial support in order to excel as an extreme late-game option.

General Strategy

All towers including Monkey Ace start off with upgrades up to Tier 2. All upgrades are unlocked with Tower XP of the respective tower's type, and can be unlocked in any order provided that previous tiers on the same path are unlocked first. In order to suit the tower's varied specialties, some upgrades are better unlocked first before others. Below is a brief guide to unlocking Ace upgrades.