Wukong Tweaks? (Tiny Rework Proposal)

Wukong is a champion that often gets overlooked each new season, and a big part of that is likely because he isn't actually performing poorly in solo queue (in fact, his win rate has been pretty high recently). In spite of this, I feel his kit is rather dated (very similar to Shen in this regard).

Based on his kit and his scalings, he should be comparable to carry tops such as . Where I think he needs help is that he has not been given adequate defensive tools to survive a typical top-lane laning phase(this also applies to jungle sustain for jungle Wukong), giving him VERY few decent matchups. This is counteracted by the fact that his scalings are insanely high, to the point where one successful gank top can get a Wukong strong enough to turn his lane around and carry the game. While this sounds balanced, this dichotomy puts Wukong in a position where no competitive team will consider him due to how weak his laning is (especially when Malphite fills his initiation role with no issues) and solo queue players have learned to abuse his ridiculous scaling potential.

I have three main changes that I feel will make Wukong a more solid champion:

1. Rework his passive. While I'm all for simple passives, Wukong's is literally nothing more than a less reliable version of Shyvana's. It never feels useful (you don't even notice it) and there's virtually nothing the player can do to use it meaningfully (at least with Shyvana, you know you can use your ult to get some temporary tankiness). I admittedly don't have a solid plan for what to replace it with, but honestly due to the absolute lack of presence this passive has in a game any help is appreciated.

2. Tweak his W. This is his only "escape" tool, yet it has clear flaws that prevent it from being reliable defensively. The animation during Decoy does not replicate a natural stop command, so the trained eye can easily just look for the "jerk" in the animation to tell if it is actually a decoy. The only reliable use this skill gets is from jungle Wukongs that use it offensively out of fog of war to essentially replicate a cheap Shaco Q. If there is a way to at least make the decoy harder to spot it would greatly improve Wukong's defense. Since the skill doesn't offer any other defensive qualities (like a movement speed buff while in stealth) the realism of the decoy means EVERYTHING to this skill's effectiveness. Otherwise, just about the only useful thing it can do is block Caitlyn ult.

3. Slightly tone down Wukong's AD scalings ("OMG, did he just ask Riot to NERF his favorite champion?!"). I'm not so naive as to think that simply making Wukong better defensively would make him balanced considering I mentioned earlier that his scalings can carry games. His AD scalings are pretty crazy (I think the same of Annie's AP scalings, but that's for another time). If Wukong was rebalanced to have an easier time laning and a more steady scaling rate I wouldn't see any reason to make him scale into the AD monster he currently does(though some aforementioned champions are EXACTLY that right now.......for some reason....). He could instead be a still-strong-but-manageable carry that is fun to play at all points of the game and still has clear strengths and weaknesses.

And that's it! Pretty verbose, I know, but I really like Wukong in design and as a champion and I would love to see him competitively viable again. Feel free to pick apart anything I've said, whether it's incorrect information I gave or a particular tweak that just isn't feasible. All comments are welcome.