Stalling is a general purpose strategy of greatly slowing down or stopping bloons, so that they are in a good position to hit and other towers have more time to pop, which synergizes well with nearby high DPS towers. It is useful on maps with short tracks and also fast-moving bloons, and also more generally for giving towers more time to pop high-HP blimps and dense clusters.
In general, stalling forms much of the backbone of Bloons TD 5 and 6 strategy, alongside buffing other towers to deal more damage. By combining stalling with other forms of support, most bloons can be handled with relative ease. Stalling excessively is not very useful in earlier games, due to the lack of activated abilities, and before BTD5, it is usually more efficient to just pop the bloons with the cash offered instead of stalling.
A form of stalling, called Spacing, is used to space out bloons in a round. Groups of bloons will slip out of the stall one at a time, allowing for a divide and conquer strategy where the round is dispatched without having to take in the whole horde.
The opposite of stalling is known as anti-stalling, and is often best used in scenarios where it might be ideal to pop bloons at the fastest rate, such as in race events, reducing possible income for the opponent in Battles, or completing a map as quickly as possible.
BTD6[]
In general, Ice Monkeys and Glue Gunners serve to slow and stall bloons, thus allowing other towers to deal more damage over a longer period of time. Ice Monkeys specialize in stalling large groups of normal bloons, while Glue Gunner either focuses down larger targets or glues whole swathes of bloons in a short time.
One common strategy is to stall as long as possible to allow Perma-Spike to build up more spikes. Given enough time, the spikes can even take down large blimps on difficult maps.
Global Range[]
Note that all of the following stall effects require the use of an ability.
MOAB-Class Stalling[]
- MOAB Glue / Relentless Glue / Super Glue
- Maim MOAB / Cripple MOAB
- MOAB Press / MOAB Domination
- MOAB Shove
- Icicle Impale
Tips[]
- Stalling large clumps of fast bloons such as Rainbows and Ceramics makes them much easier to deal with. This is particularly true of rainbows, which lack the hard outer shell their parent bloons possess.
- Stalling MOABs in the lategame is extremely important, particularly on harder maps, as even with their relatively low base speed in most cases, an unchecked MOAB will still remove all of your lives in any gamemode without certain upgrades.
- This is especially true of DDTs, which rely heavily on their speed to offset their low health pools; slowing a DDT any amount makes it a significantly weaker target. This is why towers such as Icicle Impale and MOAB Glue are so effective; they specialize in handling DDTs thanks to their excellent stalling capabilities.
- Note that certain classes of Bloon cannot be stalled in any capacity; these include BADs and all Boss Bloons. If you have trouble handling these Bloons, do not purchase stalling towers. Use regular high damage towers or powerful buffing towers instead, or inflict other debuffs.
Races[]
Stalling also finds use in races when there are a massive amount of bloons on the screen at once. One or a few well-timed Absolute Zero or Glue Storm ability usages is a common strategy to stall way too many bloons for the current monkeys to handle. However, to get a good time, bloons should only be stalled long enough until there is sufficient money for mass cleanup, with Whole Screen damage such as Bomb Blitz or Ground Zero / Tsar Bomba or group damage such as Recursive Cluster.
BMC[]
Ice Monkeys are also a key tower for stalling in BMC. In BMC Flash, it is an exceptionally strong tower for stalling. Unlike other games in the series, BTD5 and BMC Flash Ice Monkeys can freeze already frozen bloons again. With Shard of Everfrost, Enhanced Freeze Ice Monkeys can permanently stall any bloon hit once.
Stalling can be utilized to neutralize threats and slowly pick off bloons, and take advantage of ability MK points to regenerate lives with Anti-Camo Dust, or farm cash with Supply Drop.