Monkey Sub (BTDB2)/Strategies/General

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

Monkey Sub

The Monkey Sub is a versatile and accurate water-based tower in Bloons TD Battles 2. Monkey Sub's various upgrades and respectable early-to-mid-game make it quite strong for both offense and support. The main advantage of Sub is its capability for high range and its high synergy potential, though its main weakness is its generally low pierce.

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

Base Tower

Monkey Sub

• Cost: $325
• Unlock: 75

Base Monkey Sub shoots homing darts at a reasonable price. These darts are accurate but initially have only 2 pierce. Much of the true power of the Sub will come from its upgrades. Base Subs can be placed to catch stray leaks if given a suitable water spot, like those on Koru.

Upgrades

Longer Range

Longer Range

• Cost: $130
• Path: 1
• Tier: 1
• Unlock: Default

Longer Range increases the Sub's base range. Nothing much to say here in a Battles 2 context, except that it does make it slightly easier for the Sub to reach over, particularly on certain maps.

Advanced Intel

Advanced Intel

• Cost: $500
• Path: 1
• Tier: 2
• Unlock: Default

Advanced Intel allows the Sub to reach immense range by having towers on screen to act as extra range. Provided that there are actually other towers on screen to give Advanced Intel Subs with range coverage, those Subs will gain practically infinite range. This upgrade also allows Subs to detect camo if there are camo-detecting towers on screen, such as a Ninja. Advanced Intel is a very expensive range upgrade, however, and that benefit is not very useful if there's already huge crowds of bloons on screen.

Submerge and Support

Submerge and Support

• Cost: $750
• Path: 1
• Tier: 3
• Unlock: TBA XP

Submerge and Support allows the Sub to submerge, releasing regular sonar waves that decamo bloons every cycle. The Sub won't attack while submerged, making it more of a support tower instead. Note that the sonar isn't necessarily foolproof against Camos; Camo Bloons can still pass through unstripped between cycles. Crosspathing with Path 3 increases the rate of these waves, though Path 2 does nothing for this upgrade.

Bloontonium Reactor

Bloontonium Reactor

• Cost: $2,600
• Path: 1
• Tier: 4
• Unlock: TBA XP

Bloontonium Reactor submersion decamos significantly faster, regularly pops bloons within range, and reduces ability cooldowns of all water-based abilities. For practical purposes, focus mostly on the super fast decamo and bloon-popping. The pierce of Reactor is not very high, though enough to defend against moderate waves of bloons. Crosspathing does play a role, but this time it is mostly for its offensive attack; Path 2 gives extra pierce and adds lead-popping, while Path 3 increases attack speed.

Energizer

Energizer

• Cost: $32,000
• Path: 1
• Tier: 5
• Unlock: 33,000 XP

Energizer's high price is attributed to its variety of unique support roles. In particular, it reduces ability cooldowns for all towers on screen by 20%, increases local water-based ability cooldowns further (from 15% to 50%), levels heroes faster by +50%. Energizer's main attack can be safely ignored by this stage, as it does basically negligible damage by that point.

Barbed Darts

Barbed Darts

• Cost: $450
• Path: 2
• Tier: 1
• Unlock: Default

Barbed Darts increases dart pierce by +3, for 5 at base. Barbed Darts has a slight edge against grouped bloons compared to Twin Guns for the same price. This upgrade in combination with Twin Guns or Airburst Darts helps bolster early-game popping, each of which fulfills substantial group-popping that is accurate and fairly cost-efficient. Barbed Darts does have crosspath benefits for Subs that prefer to stay localized at the benefit of extra pierce.

Heat-Tipped Darts

Heat-Tipped Darts

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

Heat-Tipped Darts gives popping of Frozen and Leads for all upgrades, including Reactors. Alone, this isn't very reliable at popping leads; the main power comes from adding it to an existing Sub.

Ballistic Missile

Ballistic Missile

• Cost: $1,600
• Path: 2
• Tier: 3
• Unlock: TBA XP

Ballistic Missile is a cheap addition to early MOAB-class damage and does decent Ceramic damage too. It is somewhat slow but it is very accurate and has quite high pierce. The higher base damage of the missiles against regular bloons also assists against rushes of bloons, destroying a lot of bloons within a tight blast radius.

First Strike Capability

First Strike Capability

• Cost: $14,000
• Path: 2
• Tier: 4
• Unlock: 20,000 XP

First Strike Capability is deadly against both ZOMGs and BADs. It is very cheap for its single-target specializations, though it requires more than one use to destroy BADs, and it isn't efficient against large amounts of BADs on much higher rounds, where blimp HP scales over time. First Strike Capability can be sold and rebought to allow for multiple uses within a short timeframe, but requires heavy micro and plenty of cash.

Pre-Emptive Strike

Pre-Emptive Strike

• Cost: $32,000
• Path: 2
• Tier: 5
• Unlock: 45,000 XP

Pre-Emptive Strike fires endless missiles that immediately deal 800 damage to all blimps entering from the entrances, including blimps sent by the opponent. It doesn't matter how many blimps come from the entrance; the Pre-Emptive Strike damages them all. However, the instant damage does not penetrate through blimps, and it becomes less effective once bloon health-and-speed ramping occurs. There is a special interaction with Sub Commander that doubles the damage of the triggered missiles. Pre-Emptive Strike's main ballistic missile attacks also gain much more damage and attack much faster, making it suitable for dealing with very large groups of bloons such as Tight Ceramics.

Twin Guns

Twin Guns

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

Twin Guns doubles the attack speed of dart attacks and enhances attack speed of all other attacks. This is a general DPS boost for the Monkey Sub. Alone, this upgrade tends to work better against spaced bloons.

Airburst Darts

Airburst Darts

• Cost: $800
• Path: 3
• Tier: 2
• Unlock: Default

Airburst Darts splits darts into 3 upon collision with a bloon. This gives the Sub with extra grouped popping power. There are also crosspathing benefits for Ballistic Missiles and Submerge Subs by increasing attack speeds of those upgrades by respectable amounts.

Triple Guns

Triple Guns

• Cost: $950
• Path: 3
• Tier: 3
• Unlock: TBA XP

Triple Guns improves the power of Airburst Darts by shooting these bursting darts at a faster rate. This slightly edges its performance in outputting grouped damage via those particular weaponry. Because it still only shoots moderately fast, an Alchemist buff works very well with Triple Guns.

Armor Piercing Darts

Armor Piercing Darts

• Cost: $2,800
• Path: 3
• Tier: 4
• Unlock: TBA XP

Armor Piercing Darts improves the Sub's grouped popping power and single-target popping power, particularly against MOAB-class. It is somewhat pricy but it is more efficient against MOAB-class bloons than multiple Triple Guns, aside from those influenced by the Sub Commander buff.

Sub Commander

Sub Commander

• Cost: $25,000
• Path: 3
• Tier: 5
• Unlock: 25,000 XP

Sub Commander grants a buff to all Subs that gives double damage and +4 pierce, and Sub Commander itself attacks twice as fast in conjunction with that buff. The true power of Sub Commander comes from placing as many Tier 3+ Subs on screen as possible.

General Strategy

All towers including Monkey Sub 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 Sub upgrades.