Ballon

Balloon, however are very weak unit in primary levels and can be easily shot down by air defense, but with upgrade and spell they are very much effective. Maximum level balloons are used widely by town hall 9 and 10 players.

Balloons are skeletons like wall breakers, in the hot balloons. They drop bombs on the village and cause a large amount of splash damage. They can be a devastating unit for other buildings, but anti air defensive building (like air defense) can easily take them down. Balloons can do extra damage while they are destroyed.

Each level balloon pilot is actually a similar level wall breaker. Balloons undergo significant changes in level 3 and level 6. Initially in level 1 they get a red envelope with some patch on it. It gets wooden armour on it’s side when it gets upgraded to level 3. In level 6, it’s red envelope becomes black and it gets a white skull on it. In level 6, which is maximum now, balloon comes with a huge hitpoints.

Balloon has got the preferred target of defensive buildings. It’s more useful than the giants in this case. Because mortars, canons and every other defensive building that can only target ground units, remain inactive for balloons. Using this strategy and destroying the air defence balloons can be effectively used in almost every level player. Balloon are useful once you destroy the only air defence in lower level base, and when implemented with lava hounds in higher bases. In town hall 7 and 8 players use balloons with dragons. Basically you have to use any unit that will protect your balloons from air defence building. Dragons and lava hounds do that while balloons destroy the rest of defensive buildings.

Balloons initially have a very little amount of health, which is not sufficient at all. But after it got upgraded in the laboratory, it gets a good amount of HP. Maxed out balloons have 545 HP which is indeed a great amount for an air unit. Because of its high health and damage, town hall 9 and 10 players frequently use balloons for multiplayer attack, war attack, farming base and trophy pushing as well. Hitpoints of different level balloons are:

Balloons can deal a huge amount of damage. From level 2, balloons get 50% of damage increase in every upgrade. It makes them very much effective in battlefield. Moreover, they can even damage after they are shot down. They deal same as the DPS after their death within its range. Except from level 6, every level balloon drops bomb carried by similar level wall breaker. The Damage per second of balloons are:

Balloons are the first air troops to be unlocked in the barrack. That means a lot of defensive buildings that are triggered to ground units are inactive for balloons. This is a huge advantage. For town hall level 6, you’ll get only 1 air defence with no air seeking mine to attack your balloons. It’s very much easy to take 100% of a town hall 6 base with balloons after the air defence is destroyed/under upgrading.

A great advantage of balloons is they deal splash damages. It has a range of 1.2 tiles area splash. As balloons increases their damages by 50% in every level upgrade, they can deal a devastating amount of damage on the enemy village. And because they got splash damages, they can damage multiple buildings with one hit. Small groups of balloon attacks are dangerous for any village.

Balloons have the slowest movement speed of all air units in clash of clans. It has a movement speed of 10 which is even slower than giants. Movement speed is a big fact in COC as every attack has a time limit. Also slow movement will give more time to the opposition defence to defeat the balloons. Air defence is the biggest problem of balloons. It’s slow speed lets air defence to defeat them easily.

Balloon’s range is 0.4 tiles. Although it has an area splash of 1.2 tiles, it has to get close to the buildings to destroy them. As they have a slow speed and average health, defensive buildings get more times to defeat them.

Balloons requires 2000 elixirs in level 1. But initially it is a great wastage of elixirs. Level 1 balloons have a little health and damage. So they can barely survive from a air defence. Instead of balloon you would probably like to use barch raid as they cost way little and gives much in return. But it will be useful to attack with level 5-6 balloons. When your cost will return you a good amount of loot. Balloons cost is one of the major reasons of not being used in farming bases. The costs of different level balloons are:

Balloons require 5 housing space which is really a big deal for the low level bases. Because balloons are not very effective while deployed single unit. You need to deploy them in groups. And it is not a good attack if you use ground troops with balloons, but for town hall 5-6 you can do that because of only one air defence. In that case, the housing space is pretty much a big deal. You need to take some giants (which also cost 5 housing space) to destroy the air defence before you can deploy your balloons. Apart from that, low level bases do not have a good camp capacity. So the housing cost matters a lot for them.

The biggest reason farming bases do not use balloons is its training time. It takes 8 minutes to train a balloon. A fully upgraded base needs more than 1.5 hours to fill up its camp with balloons. It is a huge time. Also for players who are going to champion’s league it’s a big disadvantage for them. An attack after 1.5 hours won’t let them keep their trophies safe. For long training time farming bases can’t use balloon frequently for multiplayer attacks.

Balloons can only attack ground units. Balloon is the only unit that do not attack it’s same opposition unit. In fact it can’t attack any air unit. This disadvantage is the reason that balloons are not a good clan castle troop for defending your village. Balloons are inactive and can be defeated by any air unit, even a minion.

The long training time and relatively high cost lowers the effectiveness of balloons for farming bases. 8 minute training time for 5 housing space is one of the longest training times in clash of clans. Loonion attack (Balloon and minion) at TH9 could be effective at farming Dark Elixir, the amount of time it takes to train is a disadvantage.

From Town Hall Levels 4 to town hall level 7 (Balloon level 1 to 4), it is not very useful to attack with balloons. Their long training time, slow speed, hitpoints and most importantly training cost will be the reason not to use balloons. But it’s good to use Balloons in the campaign missions, where many of the prearranged bases don’t have air defense or have air defense structures that can easily be destroyed before deploying Balloons. Because of not having any time limit single player missions can be completed by destroying the air defense archer tower and wizard tower and then deploying only one balloon, though it needs a bit of patience.

When you’re at Town Hall 9, Balloons are one of the best troops for you. The increase of hitpoints and damage from level 5 to level 6 is perhaps the biggest increase in hitpoints and DPS across any level and unit of Clash of Clans. 108 to 162 DPS and 390 to 545 hitpoints which is 50% increase in damage and a 40% increase in health is the reason that will make balloons your favorite unit. This dramatic increase in strength makes balloon useful for attacks.

Balloons are good unit to clear the clan castle troops. They usually attack the defence first. But when they are defeated they will use death splash and deals a lot of damages to clan castle troops. But keep in mind this technique will not work for any air troops. Balloons death splash only works for ground units.

Air defence is the problem for balloon attack. So you can deploy balloons in a place where they will target the air defence first. But it’ll not useful to deploy them if the air defence is far to fly for. They will shot down quickly.

Balloons are very much effective with rage spell and haste spell. Balloon got a great damage per second but a slow speed. Rage spell will even increase their DPS and speed as well. Haste spell do not increase the DPS but increase the speed for a good amount of time. Balloons are devastating units with these spells.

Balloons are not that good unit for CC troops to guard your village. Their target is ground and they cannot do anything when it is an air raid. But they are good for defending from ground attacks. In lower level town halls where players attack with barbarians, archers and giants, balloons do a great job there.

Similarly balloons are not good unit for clan castle troops in wars. But they are useful for lower level town halls like TH3-4.

To design a base that is anti balloon first you have to look forward to your air defence. You should always max out your air defence. And place them in the middle of your base to make it hard to destroy them. Use your air sweeper to sweep away the balloons from your air defence. In lower level bases, balloons have a little health. That means a couple of air bomb will defeat them. A good strategy is to place a pair of air bomb in one place. It will instantly defeat even a group of balloons.

To be safe from balloon attack you will probably like to get some air troops in your clan castle all the time. Because balloons will never attack them. You will not always get dragons to defend your village but some minions will be enough to take those balloons down.