Wukong Minor Rework Ideas

Context:

• Wukong was performing too well with Duskblade / Stormrazor / lethality, as a "degenerate" One-shot from stealth assassin, so the items he used, his runes, his base damage on E, Q and his Q scaling was nerfed.
• Wukong was intended to be a bruiser, but his lack of CC, lack of sustained damage, lack of health sustain, lack of reliable defenses, possibilities for stealth, front-loaded damage and high AD scaling make him play better as an assassin currently.
• Wukong will not receive a full rework, but XinZhao level work is a possibility. Lowering of AD scaling and increase of base damages is being considered (Riot Maple interview with Harambe).

Research:

In general, I feel that there are so many interesting incarnations of Wukong in other MOBAs, it would be easy to refer to some of those ideas in order to help improve Wukong.

https://arenaofvalor.gamepedia.com/Wukong http://hear.99.com/en/heroes/sunwukong.shtml https://smite.gamepedia.com/Sun_Wukong http://paragon.wikia.com/wiki/Wukong#Default

The Wukong from Paragon was a very interesting example. The game no longer exists, and the assets have been made public, so borrowing isnt stealing?

• He had two stances, which changed his other two abilties. One stance granted him healing when killing champs or minions, the other granted bonus gold.
• His Q Pushed enemies away in one stance, or allowed him to dash in a direction in the other.
• His E allowed him to smash the ground and slow in one stance or "cloudwalk" (high movement speed, inaccessible to melee) in the other.
• His ultimate spawned clones on every auto-attack which stood still and attacked enemies in range for 4 seconds.

However, what really pulled his kit together was the fact that he would want to skirmish near his clones, but could use his Q to push clones into people, or people into clones or into bad situations, given his mobility. It was a very interesting playstyle.

Proposals:

1-- In this case, with just a couple easy changes, Wukong in LoL could get some of that Paragon playstyle.

If clone knocked enemies up at the end of the spin, and Q became a skillshot push, it would allow Wukong SOOO many interesting plays:

• You clone, and if people stay near, they get knocked up. Pretty simple and it punishes people who misplay around your clone.
• You clone, they run, you reposition, and push clone into them, or them into clone.
• You clone, and while stealthed, get behind an enemy, push him into your team.
• You dive the enemy, clone immediately, then ult: They get knocked up by ult, then clone spins 1.5s later and knocks them up again.

Basically, with these changes, Wukong can suddenly have teamfight presence, get a source of CC, but allow that CC to be a source of skill expression, not a point and click stun / knockup. Given that the clone knockup has a 1.5s delay, skilled players can play around it as a telegraphed CC, but Wukong can also use more resources and skilled play to make it harder to avoid, pushing the clone (or other players) around.

This way, you can build Wukong as a tank and be useful (knock people up, stay in the fight, disrupt), he maintains his essence as a skirmisher, trickster, fighter, and you could even lower scalings and increase base damages to make him a more solid bruiser.

2-- Another, and perhaps simpler option, would be to change Wukongs ult from a sustained damage, to a multiple use Ult. Having a sustained damage Ultimate is not particularly fitting to Wukong's playstyle. Thus, it could work like this:

• One option that was mentioned by Loban was having it work like Ahris ult, where once activated, you can activate it another two times within a time limit. With this case, knockup would only work once per target, it is an instant cast, and Wukong can keep moving and attacking as he uses it.
• Another option would be for it to work more like Teemo mushrooms. Wukong has a set number of ult charges that refresh on a cooldown and theres an internal cooldown to how often it can be used. This way, Wukong could spread out his knockups as he sees fit. In this case, I would argue that the damage would have to be lowered significantly given the strength this ult would provide in terms of utility.

3-- Again, Loban's idea and not mine.:

• Steal the passive off of Shojin's Spear and give it to Wukong.

Very little work would need to be done, from a technical standpoint since the item is already coded and tested in Blitz. Wukongs passive is old, uninteresting, and unhelpful in many situations. If Wukongs passive was already stolen for Gargoyles Stoneplate, why cant Wukong steal the passive off of Shojin?

Conclusions:

• Wukong needs help.
• Wukong doesnt need a full rework
• Changes made should not increase his burst capacities.
• Changes made should not require tons of coding and art assets.
• There ARE good options, both in this post, in reddit and throughout the forums.