Powerful Darts (BTDB2)

BTD4

BTD5

BTD6

BTDB2

“	Darts move faster, can pop more bloons each shot and can pop frozen bloons.	”
	~ BTDB2 description

Powerful Darts with no crosspaths

Powerful Darts is the 2nd upgrade on Path 3 for the Dartling Gunner in Bloons TD Battles 2. It is similar to its BTD6 counterpart, except with more pierce and a bigger pierce bonus, alongside a much lower pricetag. It increases the pierce of the Dartling Gunner by +3 at base, increasing from 2 to 5, in addition to various additional benefits to crosspaths. It also allows popping of Frozen Bloons.

Crosspaths do a significant effect on other paths of Dartling. In terms of pierce: +30 pierce for Plasma Accelerator, +2 impacts for Ray of Doom's first-target damage, and +3 pierce for all other Dartlings and their attacks. Also bigger projectile sizes.

It costs $800.

Strategy

Summary

Powerful Darts adds a large amount of extra pierce to enhance the Dartling Gunner's grouped-popping potential. This makes it strong enough to handle highly grouped weak rushes with ease, including Grouped Yellows and Grouped Pinks. It can also pop Frozen Bloons, allowing Dartling to become compatible with Ice Monkeys.

Tips

• 0-2-2 is usually the better crosspath due to utilizing the pierce buff more than 2-0-2, though 2-0-2 is better against spaced bloons.
• This is the key upgrade you should get for early game Dartling Gunners as it provides them with the necessary pierce to defend eco sends.

Version History

Initial release (compared to BTD6 Version 28.0)

• Powerful Darts cost decreased ($1200 → $800)
• Powerful Darts pierce increased (3 → 4)
• Powerful Darts pops frozen bloons (damage type Sharp → Shatter)

1.0.4

• Powerful Darts costs less ($800 → $700)

1.4.0

“	The Dartling Gunner has been a prolific tower in the Battles 2 meta for a long time. We increased its pierce in one of the earliest updates to make it a viable starter but this resulted in it being the most dominant tower in the meta and it has had several nerfs to try and bring it back to the power level we intended. This update reduces the price and base pierce back to its original values with the intention that Dartling can be used as a starter but will not be able to hold off early waves as effectively without upgrades or help. We have increased the pierce of xx2 Powerful Darts to allow it to keep its potency in the mid game.	”
	~ Ninja Kiwi, referring to base Dartling vs Powerful Darts

• Powerful Darts pierce bonus increased from +3 → +4
  • Overall pierce remains the same

1.6.0

• Powerful Darts costs more ($700 → $800)

1.8.0

• Powerful Darts pierce increase reduced +4 → +3

3.2

• Powerful Darts now further increases pierce of 0-4-2 ability missiles from +2 to +3
• Powerful Darts now further increases impacts of 5-0-2 Ray of Doom from 1 to 3

“	Dartling has always had a decent presence in the meta, however it’s also always had some subpar upgrades, such as Laser Cannon and Ray of Doom. Since the top path leads on to 4xx Plasma Accelerator which already has no spread in its aim, we have passed down this accuracy to 3xx Laser Cannon, so that it can be more precise in its long distance accuracy. The Ray of Doom change has been made to provide a general buff to the upgrade and also to even out the crosspaths for it. Previously, it barely benefitted from the bottom path crosspaths since the beam already has high pierce, whereas the middle path crosspaths were massively more enticing, providing faster attack speed and camo detection. This Ray of Doom change offers the interesting possibility of xx2 now being the stronger crosspath when dealing with certain scenarios, such as defending multiple BADs. Lastly, xx2 provides regular x3x rockets with +3 pierce so it makes sense for this to also be the case for the ability rockets, especially since this crosspath option is not as appealing as the top path.	”
	~ Ninja Kiwi

Gallery

The powerful dart upgrade’s dart with trail

Trivia

• Powerful Dart's frozen-popping was then ported into BTD6 in a later update.