Ultimate Bloons TD 6 Strategy - Alch Buffing

[@Chom_Chom]

This is a very whacky tower so as you can see in the comments many great questions and clarifications are being brought up. I’ll respond to all of them and if you want more explanation you can check out my responses.

[@joshmertaw6031]

You know you play alot of chimps when you discount village in sandbox

[@casualmarkit9969]

One thing I noticed no one's mentioning: ALL attackspeed buffs increase the rate of buffing. Not just the x-x-1 crosspath, all of them. (NO, DO NOT OC THE ALCH BUFF EVER.) This means clumped up, tight, and/or modular stategies that chuck in an alch under the Drums village with the others can much more easily get away with a crosspath mid. I often find, depending on buff targets, if no JD 4-2-0 buffs 1-2 towers only but does so well, JDed 4-2-0 can do 1-3 with okay uptime. In spam strats this often means you exclude the monsters that make it only buff 1 anyway, so for simply placing the alch under JD with the towers it is buffing it can /effectively/ cover 2-3 with okay uptime in spams depending on whats spammed. The increase from 40 to 55 charges is between a 25% and a 50% increase, so lefs say its a 33% for (Over)Simplicity. Lets say Total Uptime (soft capped at 100%) is found by multiplying the 'Buff Strength' ie base duration (as a number to be used as a multiplier, shorthand "BS;") with the 'Time Effectiveness' ie a measure of how often it gives the buff to each target (as a percent, shorthand "TE".) The total (oversimplified) usefullness of the alch will be called 'Power,' and is found by multiplying the Uptime by the number of targets being buffed, which should be fine enough for a spam strat like I will be discussing but obviously wont fly in other applications of Alch Buffs. A 4-0-1 covers 2-3 towers with a 1x BS say about 90% of the time, as the bottom path is easily around a 1.5x attackspeed buff. A 4-2-0 alch with JD gives a 1.33x BS to 2-3 towers around 65% of the time. The sub spam used is a 3 tower covered kind of spam due to their attackspeed not being stupid high. 4-0-1 with JD exceeds 100% of the time, but retains the 1.0x buff strength. TE over 100% means either wasting it or its covering one more with less TE (ie 4-0-1 will either soft cap at 100% for 3 targets or goes to 4 targets with noticeably reduced TE [in this context,]) which in the comparison test shown should be the former due to two being used, covering all 6 towers pretty well even without JD. 4-0-1 in the example should be about 11% better than not buffed due to JD, as 90 -> 100 is a multiplier of 10/9, and 1/9 is roughly 11%. Given no JD 4-2-0 only would've buffed two targets instead of three with about 100% Uptime, the JD is closer to a 50% Power increase due to how much farther it makes the buff reach while making the most out of the innate uptime buff from the crosspath /in this context/. This means most of the benefit from JD is not useful in the comparison test for the 4-0-1 but is used to the fullest by the 4-2-0, shrinking the gap in Power considerably in that situation. This fact I know was a confounding variable in the experiment, and would be solved by having 8 towers instead of 6, removing the soft cap on the 4-0-1s that was making them wasteful and less effective than they could've been. Considering more hard numbers with 6 subs and two alchs, JD 4-0-1 has 1.0x BS with 100% TE for 3 targets, so 3 Power per alch. 4-2-0 with JD has 1.33x BS with 70% TE with 3 targets, so is like 2.9 power per alch. Now with 8 towers, JD 4-2-0 remains at its power for 6 targets, as it already hit its target cap; but 4-0-1 now has 1.0x BS with like 80% TE* for 4 targets, which is now 3.2 power per alch instead of 3. By simply removing the target soft cap the gap in Power goes from .1 to .3 per alch, which should be more sensible given the purpose of a 4-0-1 is aligned to do much better in the situation this oversimplified 'Power' equation tests for. A difference between 2.9 and 3.0 is a 1/29th (3.4%) increase compared to the 3/29th (10.3%) increase without the soft capping, which makes sense why you expected a much better increase over the other crosspath but didnt get it. You didnt expect the JD to make that much of a difference in targets buffed, which led to soft capping and artificially limiting the one you expected to do better by about 2/3 the amount it could've went over the other. Given the JD was making the 4-0-1s ~11% better than normal and the 4-2-0s 45% better than normal, I understand why you expected the 4-0-1s to be obviously better in this situation knowing how they behaved without JD on. Without the JD, 4-2-0s would've had a power of 2 per (100% Total Uptime 2 towers per) while the 4-0-1s would've had 2.7 power per (90% Total Uptime 3 towers per,) a 35% Power increase over 4-2-0s instead of the merely 3% increase with both JD and not enough towers to buff and show its power you had found in yor example. *The TE drop is less sever for 4-0-1s due to the x-x-1 being a BASE cooldown decrease, meaning it multiplies with JD instead of adds, making it give even more extra buff literally than 4-2-0 does with JD, which reduces the loss of TE noticeably. Reminder that this is both an oversimplification and me struggling to make wordeable sense of it and put the real situation into numbers that are clean enough for presentation; set it up and experiment with it yourself if you want to actually understand it in reality, these numbers here are just illustrative of the points I'm making a layperson could technically read and comprehend. >Why do Alch's do this weird nonsense when they have more attackspeed? Idk NK coded them to do that pretty much, and it just so happens a JD on a 4-2-0 is enough to cause this shift in buffing targets. For anyone curious, yes a 3-2-0 does go to buffing two targets with JD too. Props to them for getting the t4 much better than the t3, as the crosspathing on t4 is much more dynamic but sensible with enough information than just '3-2-0 is better moving on.' Still dont like the brain damages comprehending everything for the first time does, but hey win some lose some. Next best question: > Why do /I/ know this? My prefered strategy is clumping everything into a tight ball, either to get the most value out of either the top path mermonkey or JD as I dont want to buy more than 1 village like 95% of the time. This often means that when I use alch buff like a normal person and keep the target queue in mind, I tend to have it under JD and I keep an eye out for what gets buffed. More often than not I saw one extra target recieving buff than normal, which was fine by me as I often used strats that used multiple damage towers or included support that liked being Alched. (Glue, its almost always Glue that's like that, HM to Top Path Ice.) This sometimes meant I had to get Füñƙŷ with my support placements just to force the alch onto only two targets due to this nature and many supports NOT actually Liking Alch buff, but I've seen good success from playing around it. I've also kept this stuff in mind for AMD targets too and that gets fun to intentionally play around, like using Psi and a bottom path dartling is fine or okay due to Psi liking the alch but not recieving the AMD, meaning the buckshot recieves all of it despite the alch buff itself being split between two towers. What I mean to say is that Weird interactions and stuff like the deep recesses of Alch Buff are just fun to me to mess with, so I stumbled upon this as a natural consequence of my curiosity and goofing around while I had less skill and game knowledge, on easier maps where I could afford to sit there and pay attention to Alch Buff of all things.

[@dapeevi]

10:01 Some examples: Tack shooters (especially middle path and bottom path), any sniper with the shrapnel crosspath, recursive clusters and higher, xx2 subs, destroyers, canon ships and above, double shots and higher, druids(especially bottom and middle path), bottom path dartlings, top path aces, neva-misses, dragon's breaths, sun avatars and spike factories, Quincy, Gwen and Adora. Bonus tip: There are other towers that benefit well from alch buff despite not having the characteristics I mentioned above. Those are towers that either struggle with pierce (Inferno ring), need extra consistency (sharpshooters and above, top path bomb t4) or that have a stronger attack that is fired after multiple attacks(Pat, Rosalia,)

[@scrittle]

Really wish this video just listed what Alchemist synergises with instead of repeating explanations on pierce.

[@snowdrop9810]

I think a lot of people forget about the attack speed buff of the Bbrew. +11% attack speed for the cost of a bbrew is HUGE for slow attacking& expensive towers like the PEX, MAD, Supermines, etc (sure supermines isnt a chimps tower, but its what comes to mind when thinking about big, slow hitting towers)

[@abhijiths5237]

pex?

[@zaplane25]

@@abhijiths5237plasma excellerator

[@Jdnfjdksndj]

​@@abhijiths5237I think primary expertise

[@MasterKnightDH]

I'll go ahead and list all of the Hero attacks that benefit from Alch buffing: -Quincy: all attacks -Gwen: all attacks outside Burn effect -Jones: all attacks -Obyn: regular attack, Brambles -Ben: Trojan (does not receive AMD due to attacks being boolean in damage infliction) -Churchill: regular attack, MG attack (MOAB Barrage isn't included) -Adora: regular attack (Ball of Light isn't included) -Ezili: regular attack non-Curse damage (MOAB Hex isn't included) -Pat: regular attack -Brickell: all attacks including MOAB Mine -Sauda: all attacks outside Bleed effect -Psi: regular attack (does not receive AMD even though Destructive Resonance does receive the Damage buff) -Geraldo: regular attacks (no items benefit from Alch buffing) -Corvus: Soul Harvest, Dark Ritual, Trample strong hit, Malevolence, Ancestral Might -Rosalia: all attacks outside Shock effect of chargeup Laser (Etienne can't receive Alch buffing in the first place.) And yes, I'm going to remark about how Rosalia has massive Counts on her regular attack at Level 13 onward as well as Scatter Missile using only 1 Alch buff charge for its mass of missiles, AND the usage of both weapons together during Flight Boost using only 1 Alch buff charge per attack. It makes her benefit so richly from the Alchemist buffing, and the range boosting also helps since it's not redundant because of the added capability AND leeway with positioning. You may be surprised by the results.

[@Chom_Chom]

Out of those I buff Quincy Gwen Obyn - most of the time Adora Pat - if you are going to take advantage of stall strat with Pat Sauda Rosalia

[@mg-jf5ld]

15:56 berserker brew gives +2 pierce not +1

[@Chom_Chom]

Good catch, I reviewed the stats of the brew beforehand but in the voiceover I guess I mixed up the pierce buff for bbrew and stim.

[@olivergro7105]

So why are spikefactorys so good with alch

[@Chom_Chom]

Ahh, something that you caught that wasn’t mentioned in the video. Here’s an explanation. First of all for all spike factories in chimps mode you just want to get a 300 (301 only helps it a little bit so you could buy it if you want I guess) unless it’s a 250 to where I usually get 320 because it attacks much faster. They are great with alch because both the damage and pierce will directly increase damage and complement each other whilst doing so. Increasing the piece of a laid spike will allow it to pop another bloon making 1 unit of spike now dealing 2, double the damage and that’s 4 damage which can continently be applied all to single target. Unlike a regular tower this buff would only do half the damage to a single target. Other towers will work with this such as Obyn brambles, caltrops, and so on. I’ll answer any more questions :)

[@klos5612]

20:33 what?! xD

[@Teh-Dee-bear]

AMD doesn't actually on apply on glue gunners, unless they're crosspathed with 2-x-x. They did a small patch about it ages ago

[@haeokaipa]

so helpful and helped clear up a lot of misconceptions i had with alch 😭😭🙏

[@Bezzle.]

Is the AMD buff applicable to all projectiles? Would the top path ninja receive that plus one damage to all his stars? Would it also apply to the recursive cluster and bomb blitz?

[@Chom_Chom]

It buffs the volley, so all the stars would get buffed and all the recursive too

[@quelqunx7470]

I like to go 301 only for 420 sniper and top and bottom path spike factories. 420 alch is good for giving full uptime on two slower attacking towers and 401 is good for giving some uptime on 3 slow attacking towers. Otherwise, i go 320.

[@bmanjamin]

this just confused me imma stick with not buffing a slow shooter like the mad and buffing a lot of projectiles and high attack speed like sun avatar

[@Jdnfjdksndj]

That'll work fine, but you still could alcbuff the mad just for the attack speed.

[@bmanjamin]

@ or just alch buff everything 🤷‍♂️

[@ShadySandwich54]

Now that you’ve done a video about the top path alch, could you do one about the middle path alch? It’s a very under-utilised tower and there are surprisingly little videos about it.

[@Chom_Chom]

I’m doing a video on every tower path. The total transformation video along with all the tower paths up to the final harmonic (in upgrade order) are currently posted as member only and will become public on the regular scheduling.

[@Exshem]

Fk alch buff, I hate alch buff unconditionally. Pretty much an antithesis to a balanced support tower by both granting immunity bypass, a disproprtionate increase for certain tower's dps, all while being a dirt cheap tower that has zero drawbacks to run.

[@XDCarson457]

Game Over - Alchemist Used

[@Ytt7um]

holy, this is a longer video

[@flosch1667]

In which cases should you use a 300 alch?

[@Chom_Chom]

if you don't want to spend money. I excluded a lot of the cases about not wanting to spend money/being greedy because I think this will cause a lot of issues or is mostly redundant for black borders. a lot times for expert chimps or chimps challenges you will want to cut alch buffs and crosspaths to make way for extremely tight and insane saveups but in the case for anything bellow that there will never be (if you are playing at least somewhat right) an extremely tight and massive saveup. For this reason I decided to cut a lot of this.

[@nikolapetric7089]

Genuine question: do you think top path alchemist should be nerfed? I get that it has become a core element in any strategy, but I can't be the only one that's tired of seeing this guy in every single game. Maybe if ninja kiwi makes it so that only tier 4 gives +1 damage and leaving tier 3 to give just attack speed and pierce? What are your thoughts?

[@Meteo_sauce]

doesnt matter too much since for 4k im still getting t4 everygame

[@Bidens_Diaper]

No

[@TheAscendedShadow-pg3ok]

I think it is perfectly fine, the alchemist is very necessary in BTD6.

[@MasterKnightDH]

@@nikolapetric7089 I think T3 should have a longer reapplication timer, which would disrupt juggernauting.

[@nikolapetric7089]

@TheAscendedShadow-pg3ok you think it's necessary only because we're all used to it being OP, but I'm actually in a process of trying to beat all maps without using alch and you can manage without it perfectly fine.

[@mythmakroxymore1670]

It’s just slap this on and win with half the towers. Most boring way to play a map to me. I just use them for post BAD.

[@JaydenWashington-c9b]

Nerf Alc