u/Jakkilip

FULL QUALITY IMAGES, MORE GRAPHS AND ADDITIONAL INFO CAN BE FOUND HERE: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-G7lD7TqgP_d_txFOmDFA5Iq_ASXH4Bq?usp=drive_link

Freeplay Towers Performance on Logs Deep Easy Mode (Round 500+)

The goal of this project, is to provide data about every single relevant tower's performance in deep easy mode freeplay on logs, that is as accurate and informative as possible. I hope that this data will ultimately allow for pushing optimization of future world record setups to the absolute limits of this game. This may also be used for getting a general idea of tower strengths in any freeplay challenge, however take it with a grain of salt and your own analysis because they will greatly vary depending on the specific round, map and whether MK is on or off. These tests were done with MK on. Each tower group has 3 graphs: Damage per Second, Space Efficiency (oc + tower as a single entry), Space Efficiency (oc being treated as a saparate tower). More details:

METHOD OF TESTING:

- Most towers were placed in semi-optimal placements on Logs that would be feasible in a real game. As exceptions, all paragons, VTSG, carrier flagship, and tack zone were placed in their most optimal placements.

- The tests were done in sandbox, simulating round 500 on chosen seed 666504721, with all bloons other than FBADs disabled. No percentage based damage was counted (ninja grand sabo, navrach hooks, etc.). All towers were max buffed to the equalent standard buffs they would most likely receive in a deep easy mode freeplay game on Logs. There are diffrent tower entries with diffrent combinations of additional buffs, for the buffs which are optional and not guaranteed to be placed on a tower. Homeland, brickell, and overclock all were used at 100% uptime, achievable by rebuying or buying multiple of these buffs. Because of the AOE overclock from engineer paragon being limited in a real game, it was applied only to a certain few towers that are always guaranteed to have the buff applied to them, and those include: VTSG, TSG, sentry champion, carrier flagship. This buff overclocks all of their subtowers. Temples did NOT have carrier flagship buff applied, as they are all gonna be placed on land on Logs.

- These numbers are factual results pulled from ingame testing. They might seem really weird at first glance (for example: adora buff does NOT improve temple dps by 2x). Those oddities are caused by debuff bug and attack speed cap. They are an entire topic to dive into, and it isn't documented well by anyone, so I won't provide an explanation for it here.

SOME WEIRD ICONS' MEANINGS:

Time stop icon - stall

Shinobi numR - the bloonjitsu is present inside a setup with the specified num shinobi ratio. Shinobi ratio is calculated with numOfJitsus/numOfShinobis.

Chinook on temple - the temple has the footprint of a sun avatar, achievable in game by clipping some of the temple into paths or walls, and chinooking towers inside of the remaining temple footprint.

The weird drawings of my own for aces are figure infinite and corner center path.

Overclock with an arrow pointing to some tower: the overclock is treated as a saparate tower, with a space efficiency score dependant on the damage increase on the tower it's overclocking.

Words from me:

I started this project all the way in the beginning of february, and it took me 30 hours AT LEAST of repetitively testing towers in sandbox, and coding a completely custom graph generator in C++ to allow for easily adding so many entries with complex buff sets. I'm so glad to finally complete it, it is easily my biggest contribution to freeplay research so far. 226 tower entires is just an absurd amount of data, and I hope it will be used well. Sub to my channel to support me: https://www.youtube.com/@Freeplayer-btd6

Imagine if it also said something vague like...I don't even wanna come up with anything, it'd sound corny.

Universal Powerless Freeplay Tower Tierlist (Easy mode, CHIMPS mode, Space Restricted/Freeplay Competition)

All maps were considered, as well as the 3 main freeplay gamemodes. Data taken from the three Freeplay Competitions that happened, and from runs on the optimal maps for pushing deep easy mode or CHIMPS was weighted the most. All towers were carefully DPS tested in sandbox. Tiers lower than 5 towers are ranked if they are relevant for use in freeplay. If you see multiple upgrades from the same path in this tierlist, that means the saparate tiers were ranked for exclusively what is unlocked by purchasing that specific upgrade.

Update 54 brought a hefty shift to the meta, and a top secret project I'm releasing soon got me to know a lot more about all the towers in this game. Brace yourself for a lot of shifts in this tierlist!

I will be slightly reworking the way I rank paragons, as I feel too many of them are too high on the list just for being paragons, so I will pull a few of them down and give them more distinct rankings by mostly grouping them on tiers A-S-SS. Moving on:

NEW! Root Of All Nature D: New worst paragon in freeplay. Only decent on easy mode with no restrictions, almost completely unusable in chimps or space restricted challenges. Full explanation can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US__HuTHV0s

Crucible Of Steel and Flame SS -> S: The goat has fallen off a bit. I've noticed a sizeable dip in its usage rate due to its competition improving a lot in recent updates (boomer and bomb becoming really good), as well as the bloon income buff making more expensive paragons affordable more often. It's still a great paragon, but it's sometimes outshined by stronger options nowadays. It barely holds on to the S tier for being excellent particularly in rounds above 400.

Ballistic Obliteration Missile Bunker SS -> S: A bit overrated in the most recent tierlist, but an S tier is deserved for the high versatility, low price and a consistent high damage output. I feel like it's just a shy bit away from SS, mainly being held back by its difficult pop farming and not having quite enough firepower to truly deserve the highest ranking.

Glue Storm SS -> S: While having 100% uptime and global range, the debuff sometimes isn't very significant and can be skipped, so it's not an absolute god tier.

Glaive Dominus S -> A: This paragon gets caught lacking on single target damage, it requires a long map and a relatively high round to do good damage. For this reason, A tier.

Overclock SS -> S: The top secret project has proven that overclock is often far less valuable than we always thought. It doesn't feel right, but it has to be moved down. Placing more towers instead of overclocking them is better 70% of the time.

PMFC S -> A: Herald of Everfrost existing just hurt the fan club so much, since it doesn't benefit from debuff much at all. Jitsus and Destroyers smoke them easily in most scenarios. Also shifting SMFC one tier down for the same reason.

Bloon Crush A -> SS: The most valuable tower in all of freeplay. I tried a few challenges where it was unusable, and it hurt so damn much. Bloon Crush is found everywhere if you really look at it. The goat of permastunning all non-BADs in every stage of the game and every gamemode, unmatched by the competition.

Bloon Exclusion Zone C -> B: Got a hefty 20% attack speed buff this update, granting it the B tier average tier 5 tower performance.

Dark Champion C -> B: Contrary to popular beliefs, it's actually very identical in performance to the sun avatar.

Master Bomber C -> D: I can't remember the last time I saw this tower being used. Stall heavily outclassed by bloon crush and monarch.

Poplust C -> D: After testing I came to the conclusion that it is the worst dps spam tower in the game which has been used for non-meme runs.

Popseidon C -> S: In v52 and v53 respectively, popseidon received a potential +50 damage if you have an icegon, and bloon rehit after a ball bounces off a wall. Those two buffs combined made Popsi and absolute beast, being stronger than super mines at peak performance, and being more cost efficient even without icegon present, even on the most open maps in the game.

Sentry Expert D -> C: Swapped places with poplusts. No joke, it's a much better spam tower than druids.

Perma Spike F -> D: With maximum stall, and maximum buffs, this guy can actually burst a considerable amount of damage (3-4 million). It might unironically be used in some niche run, we'll see.

Pirate Lord D -> F: The miniscule dps this tower had has been nerfed recently.

Thanks for reading! If you have any questions, ask away in the comments, I'll respond as long as they aren't dumb and obvious like "Why is blooncin F tier??" or "Why is bombgon S tier it sucks!!".