Wukong: Overall Pros and Cons

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Hello, Today I'd like what I think are the Pros and Cons to Wukong overall as a champ and how he works in game. But first a few disclaimers: >- These pros and cons are mostly based on personal opinion and do not reflect the opinions of other players and the community as a whole. I can not speak for the community as a whole and can only give my own opinions.

• This isn't to bring up issues with Wukong or his kit or anything like that, I'm merely trying dissect Wukong's overall gameplay to the best of my ability and putting that onto the table.
• the cons I list are not necessarily things I think need fixed. on the contrary, some downsides I list are inbuilt weaknesses to him that should be there to as a counter balance. Keep in mind that just because I'm saying its a downside, it doesn't mean i'm saying its a problem that needs fixed, just that it is in fact a downside.
• The list here is covering his overall kit and not each individual ability. Doing the same thing for each ability would make for a post all it's own.

Pros:

• a great example of a Diver https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/333012091051180033/402164590936326144/Diver.png

Wukong fits this definition very well. He can easily access the enemy team and has highly mobility between his Nimbus Strike, Ult and his Decoy that allows him to re-position in the middle of a fight. While he doesn't have inbuilt Sustain like or , he DOES have a durability mechanic to keep him alive in a fight in the same vain as and (Panth's Aegis passive, Vi's Shield and Kled's... um... Skaarl) as Wukong is able to gain defense for every near by enemy champ. While his ult doesn't really feel like it specifically singles out an enemy, you can break their armor first, making your ult more effective on them for most of it and aimed right you can use the knock ups to defend yourself when the enemy team tries to engage you. Not only that, but Wukong can deal large amounts of damage to enemy champs once he's built up his AD. He's generally not as tough as a Tank or a Juggernaut, but he is durable enough to keep himself in a fight and strong enough to take out an enemy.

• Unique interaction with the Stop button- Most champs have no use for the S button, which makes your champ stop all actions and stand there. Supports may find some use out of it as holding the button down lets them be near minions without aa'ing by accident, but overall its not a button that sees much use. Not the case for a Wukong player. For Wukong it allows him to fake a decoy, making enemy champs think he's trying to get in close to attack or trying to escape, when in reality they are just wasting abilities or chasing a target that isn't there. confuse an enemy team enough with this and they will never know if they are attacking you or a decoy. It's something that, to my knowledge, is something that is unique to Wukong and Wukong alone.

• Easy to pick up and learn - For someone who is starting out, a champ like or might be a bit hard to grasp right out the gate. Wukong on the other hand is really straightforward. Pretty much everything about him is very readable and for the most part doesn't involve a wall of text to explain what each ability does. E clearly makes you dash and you can see/hear the attack speed increase after the dash. his Q lets you know its an "empowered" attack with its effects and while you might not pick up that it gives a range increase right away, you will see a little circle around the enemy and the little broken shield they just added telling you they got weaker in some way. W is very clear about being invisible and the decoys use and his Ult is very visible as to how it works (just click to spin). A new player may overlook his passive, but Wukong's passive isn't something that needs you to proc something or understand fully to get when to use it right. It just does its thing and you can do yours.

• Versatile Items - To me, what Wukong lacks in kit combo variety, he makes up for with useful items. Being a champ that is friendly to new players, He doesn't really interact too poorly with most AD/ Defensive items. I've seen builds range from to and while these may or may not be the best item for him to use, a new player would likely appreciate the free range of items early on before they have a chance to learn what works the best and doesn't. Its not to a point where you can build him full AP or something, but there is still some range for new players to experiment with.

• Was able to work as a Diver/Assassin before existed - Before Kayn, Wukong was advertised as a Bruiser (now Diver) that also worked pretty well as an Assassin. You could build him full damage to blow up an enemy and use jukes to escape to a decent level of success or you could build him with a some durability to make him be able to jump head first into the other team and deal with whoever your team needed to be taken out, weather its an ADC, a Mage or a Tank. At the time, this was a concept that wasn't all that common on existing champs as every champ had the "one way to play them".

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Cons:

• Insanely Teamfight oriented- With how Wukong's passive works, he has some good reliability in a teamfight, but that passive is a bit of a double edged sword. It also means he's much less effective in a 1v1 situation as it doesn't even give 10 bonus Armor and MR. Compared to other Divers with healing passives or actual shields to keep them safe in a 1v1, Wukong is forced to play more passively in order to keep himself alive, which conflicts with him being as strong of a lane bully most other Divers and even Juggernauts are supposed to be. Wukong does best forcing the enemy to be wary of him and having them play defensively in order to keep alive, but if the enemy can out bully him, he's generally forced to hug tower until the teamfight stage unless there is intervention by his team.

• All or Nothing style - With the changes that are being made to Divers (very slowly), and the changes made to Assassins to make them less of "Kamikaze" roles and give them both their own unique ways to make it through an engage if they play well, Wukong on the other hand is only has his Ult and the hope that the enemy will avoid him long enough to finish his ult then decoy out to reposition and get the jump on the enemy again. Its to a point that even Meddler has mentioned that they feel he's a bit too All or Nothing atm.

• Late game champ, but still on the old definition of late game- As Wukong sits right now, he is a late game champ through and through. Now this is normal for a lot of champs and they don't have a lot of issues keeping up, but there are two issues for Wukong. One being that anymore, the definition of late game has changed and while most champs have either been adjusted to the new late game or was made with this new idea of late game in mind, Wukong hasn't. His late game is still 30 minutes+ with a full build and unlike some other late game champs who just need to get the lead once and they will keep gaining ground until they are unstoppable, Wukong has to keep a lead over the enemy the whole time. If he losses that advantage he has even once, things can end up going down hill fast. The other issue is that being a late game champ is something that has become almost synonymous with high skill cap champs. champs like are generally worse early game, but once they have the lead it becomes hard to wrestle that lead away from them. Wukong on the other hand has one of the most simple kits in the game and that simplicity makes it easy for people to learn how to work around him, Unlike high skill champs where you are less likely to know what kind of tricks they may have up their sleeve and in turn have a harder time keeping them from getting fed.

• Lack of Skill expression - Wukong's kit has never had much skill expression in it. There was one combo to learn and other then that, the only other thing you can learn to do is to fake a decoy by pressing S, which even in itself, can be countered just by keeping an eye on how Wukong stops (Pressing S is a much smoother stop animation then actually using a Decoy). On top of that his Ult doesn't really punish him for having bad timing or poor interaction with other Champs like most other Ults in the game. He just jumps in, Ults the enemy and the rest of his team just do whatever they want. Because of that, he is one of the safest choices in the game because of the fact that he doesn't really have a lot of punishments for playing poorly with him outside of what already exists for most other champs.

• Binary mechanics -With most Champs today, their kits have more give and take that let you play around them. Wukong is from an age where there wasn't really much interaction between the player and the enemy and Wukong was no exception. his Q is just an empowered AA, his Decoy is set up so you either fall for it or you don't, he can Dive you with his Nimbus so long as you are within range and his Ult just hits anyone in range, regardless of if they have CC. There are plenty of champs who still have binary mechanics like that, but many of them have been updated with new tools, giving both the player more skill expression to reward them for doing things right and the enemy more options to play around them other then "play as Fizz and use his troll poll". One of the best examples is where his kit really didn't change all that much, but has been given more interaction via his new skill shot mechanic, a smoother Q animation and an Ult that has a clear weakness, which is being within the barrier he creates. Even some other big offenders like and are planned on being updated, Irelia specifically since she is coming next.

• ** Could support much more interesting gameplay** - Wukong has 3 parts of his kit that could easily worked around to make his kit far more interesting, his Staff, his Clones and his Cloud. I've seen Wukong in many other games and how he works, and the best example of what his kit could be capable of is from Paragon. Their Wukong has many different abilities ranging from being able to run on clouds by double jumping for a short duration, to extending his staff to launch in the other direction or at the enemy to push them back, to his passive Ult, which lets him spawn an unmoving decoy after every basic attack, that will attack a near by target for a few seconds. The most interesting thing about this Ult is that, while they can't move, you CAN push the clones with your staff in a direction or you can even push an enemy into a horde of clones. While these are two very different games and the mechanics for Paragon wouldn't likely work in League, it showed me that even being forced to work around the idea of Wukong as a base for his abilities, there are some VERY creative and cool things that could be done with his kit if given the chance.

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Those are all the pros and cons I can think of for Wukong's overall Pros and Cons for now. If there are any you can think of, feel free to mention them in the comments.Keep in mind this is talking about Wukong's overall gameplay, not individual parts of his kit. I'd love to hear other peoples opinions on what you would consider pros and cons. weather you like or hate Wukong, it would be interesting to see what other peoples take on him in game are. Thank you and have a great day.