Dartling Gunners are an excellent, well-rounded addition to any strategy. Each of the three paths available to Dartling Gunner in Bloons TD 6 excel at popping certain Bloons — Buckshot provides fantastic burst damage, Hydra Rocket Pods are very good at popping large groups of Bloons, and Laser Cannons are single-target DPS savants. If you plan on deploying the Dartling Gunner, you’ll want to take a look at our strategy on how best to use this unit.
Dartling Gunner Talent Paths
First up, the Talent Paths. As mentioned above, each of the three paths are uniquely good at something, and so deploying at least one of each is a good first step to solidifying your strategy. Here are the paths you can evolve your Gunner into:
Dartling Gunner Path 1
- Focused Firing: Spread deviation drops by 60%.
- Laser Shock: Every hit from Dartling Gunner applies a damage-over-time shock effect to Bloons.
- Laser Cannon: Dartling Gunner’s attacks morph into laser blasts, dealing increased damage and Pierce. Also increases Laser Shock’s duration.
- Plasma Accelerator: Converts the rapid laser blasts into a single powerful beam. Additional Pierce after popping a Bloon converts into more damage. Increases Laser Shock’s duration further.
- Ray of Doom: The Plasma Beam becomes bigger and endless, constantly dealing damage and inflicting massive Pierce. Laser Shock deals increased damage as well.
Dartling Gunner Path 2
- Advanced Targeting: Allows Dartling Gunner to hit Camo Bloons.
- Faster Barrel Spin: Attacks 50% faster.
- Hydra Rocket Pods: Dartling Gunner can now attack all Bloon types and produce multiple explosions on hit.
- Rocket Storm: Rockets multiply in number and gain damage boosts for both main hits and explosions.
- M.A.D.: Moab-Assured Destroyer — Drastically lowers attack speed, but gains a massive damage boost to MOAB-Class Bloons, as well as gaining extra Pierce.
Dartling Gunner Path 3
- Faster Swivel: Dartling Gunner follows the pointer twice as fast.
- Powerful Darts: Dart projectiles increase in speed and size by 50% and now pop two Bloons at once.
- Buckshot: Fires a shotgun of buckshot instead of darts, dealing increased damage and knocking Bloons back.
- Bloon Area Denial System: Converts the Dartling Gunner into a four-barrelled auto-cannon. This Tower can be set to attack automatically, and gains a 4x Attack Speed bonus.
- Bloon Exclusion Zone: Further upgrades the auto-cannon from four barrels to six and gains more buckshot per cannon. Buckshot damage increased as well.
Strategies
While the Hydra Rocket Pods are good for dealing with groups of Bloons, they can still accidentally let some leak through when swarmed. Good support for groups of tanky Bloons such as MOABs are Glue Gunners with the MOAB Glue upgrade, or Heroes that excel at stopping MOABs in their tracks, such as Pat Fusty or Psi.
Regardless of which main path you go down, you will almost always want to grab Path 3 as a secondary. Faster Swivel is important when quicker Bloons start spawning. The exception to this is when you need immediate damage to deal with slow moving MOABs, in which case a 2-2-0 Dartling Gunner spam is cheap and effective.
For general map effectiveness without any one defining strategy, we recommend building two 5-0-2 Dartling Gunners, two 0-5-2 Dartling Gunners, and two 0-2-5 Dartling Gunners. From there, add some Support Towers like Glue Gunner, and then supplement your damage as needed with other units. Recommended Monkey Knowledge to buff up Dartling Gunners include Gorgon Storm for stun support, Emergency Unlock to increase swivel speed for all Gunner units, and Cross The Streams, which allows pools of plasma to form when two Ray of Dooms cross paths.
