Overview
Now, I may not be a great player, but I have spent many hours researching the meta, and a significant amount of time practicing. During my time spent popping demon balloons, I have come across many players who are mechanically pretty good and/or have many games played, and yet continue to use towers that are absolute trash. Note that many of the towers featured in this guide are not awful, per se, but are commonly used in foolish ways.
Sniper
The Sniper Monkey is one of the least used towers in the game, and for good reason: it’s completely unable to deal with non-spaced bloons, and it is very expensive if it is intended to be used against MOAB-class bloons. However, it does fill one particular role: it is the only starting tower that can pop camo lead bloons. For this reason, it is almost completely necessary to use Sniper until you can unlock the Wizard.
If you get stuck with it in a Random Trio game, it can be set to strong to help other towers with early spaced bloon sends.
Ninja
The Ninja Monkey is one of the most popular towers in the game, and it is indeed a useful tower. However, far too often I see players who are faced with a Round 13 regrow rainbow bloon rush desparately place down a Bloonjitsu/Distraction ninja. The ninja’s biggest downside is that it has difficulty with clustered bloons. Getting a Bloonjitsu costs about $4000, and is able to pop 20 bloons. Compare this to $1200 Triple Dart monkeys that can pop 12 bloons apiece. Ninjas are very useful for popping MOABs in the late-game with Bloonjitsu, stalling MOABs with Sabotage Supply Lines, and defending early rounds, but they suffer when put up against mid-game rushes. Consider supplementing them with AOE towers such as the Mortar or Bomb that are able to pop many bloons at once.
Boomer
The Boomerang Thrower is neither a great tower nor a bad one. However, it is considerably lacking in the way of camo detection (its only permanent camo upgrade, Glaive Lord, costs $4500) and MOAB popping power. It can be a useful tower for popping tightly-packed bloons, but there are other towers (Juggernauts, cluster bombs, mortars, etc.) that do its job better.
Heli
The Heli Pilot is far too expensive to be useful, and it is almost never encountered in non-randomization games. Its only real use is in the very late game, where the Apache Dartship puts out decent popping power. In short, the Heli is obscenely overpriced for the power it delivers, and Pursuit has deplorable AI.
Spactory
The Spike Factory, or Spactory, is another rarely-seen tower. Frankly, it just doesn’t put out enough spikes per second to be useful, and Spiked Mines is really, really expensive.
Glue
The Glue Gunner is almost never used. It simply is not versatile enough to fit into Battles’ 3-tower system. It doesn’t affect MOABs at all, and its glue doesn’t slow Ceramics. I have seen it used as a fourth tower as cheap lead popping, however.
Engi
The Monkey Engineer, alias Engi, is a somewhat common tower. It is solid in the early game, but it has difficulties with MOABs and Bloon Trap is too expensive and deploys too slowly to be very useful on most maps. Cleansing Foam fires extremely slowly for how many bloons it affects, too. However, it is very useful on Indoor Pools, where its sentries allow for coverage of all three tracks.
Super Monkey
Too expensive, but useful late game. That is all.
Wizard
Hoo, boy. The Monkey Apprentice, more commonly known as the Wizard, is very, very commonly seen. This tower has a tendency to actively lower your defensive ability in the mid-game. Let me give an example.
PLAYER is playing #MOLTFAN.
PLAYER has ninjas, mortars, and farms.
#MOLTFAN has ninjas, wizards, and farms.
On Round 13, farms notwithstanding, PLAYER has a Double Shot ninja and The Big One, while #MOLTFAN has a Bloonjitsu and a lightning wizard.
Both players send a relatively small ~$2000 regrow zebra rush on round 13.
It depends on tower placement, but let’s say that PLAYER’s Big One hits the rush twice, and all the zebras are popped. (PLAYER could get a Signal Flare mortar to deal with camos.)
#MOLTFAN’s wizard hits all 15 bloons. It is then able to hit 20 of the 30 blacks and whites; however, the other 10 bloons regrow into zebras. Now #MOLTFAN has to deal with 40 regrow pinks and 10 regrow zebras. Perhaps he could deal with this using a boost.
However, now PLAYER sells his farms and sends a $9000 boosted regrow rainbow rush. #MOLTFAN can’t boost, as his tower boost is on cooldown. His wizard strikes 20 of the 27 rainbows. The 40 slower-moving zebras have slipped behind the seven rainbows and regrown when the next strike occurs. Now there are 14 zebras, 26 total blacks/whites, and 27 rainbows. #MOLTFAN panics, sells his farms, and places a storm wizard. The bloons pushed back by the tornadoes now have extra time to regrow, potentially allowing Pinks to turn into Rainbows. The German word for what ensues is “Durcheinander.” #MOLTFAN gets down another few Bloonjitsus, but his ninjas are not nearly enough to defend the now enormous rainbow rush.
The moral of the story is this: I don’t recommend using Wizards (except for camo-lead popping before you have 4th tier darts unlocked), but if you insist, for the love of God, don’t use storm wizards to defend regrow rushes. Fire is okay, but it takes two or three of them plus a boost to defend a Round 13 regrow rush.