Wukong Rework [Quick Draft for Critique]
Edit: To the people behind the downvotes: by all means downvote it if you don't like it, but it's very helpful to me if you can let me know WHY you don't like it. Would be greatly appreciated. :)
Edit 2: Added in some decoy play on the W, with an early detonate to let it be a more reliable in-combat tool or a longer duration if you want to use it for trickery. Most of the kit's complexity is now in this ability, which is likely fine for a character like Wukong.
#WUKONG
Since I've seen a lot of Wukong comments recently, I decided to take a quick pass at a Wukong rework, with the intended purpose of keeping changes as small scope as possible. The goal was to see if I could take his current theme of mobile skirmishing bruiser and drag him a little more into a sustained combat pattern and less into an assassin pattern, which also hitting his theme of skilled combatant a bit more by making his spells a little more interactive. The goal is a tricky, sustained-DPS mobile monkey who dances around the battlefield.
This is a quick, 15-minute draft, so expect flaws, and definitely hit me up with comments/critique.
NIMBUS DANCE Wukong revels in combat. Whenever he deals physical damage to an enemy champion or large monster he gains 3/3.5/4/4.5/5 armor and magic resistance (at levels 1/3/5/9/12/15/18) for 4 seconds, stacking up to 10 times. Abilities that hit multiple champions grant multiple stacks.
CRUSHING BLOW Wukong spins around, gaining movement speed and dealing physical damage to nearby enemies before elongating his staff and slamming it in the target direction, dealing additional physical damage, applying on-hit effects, and greatly slowing targets struck, decaying quickly over 1 second. He may move while casting this ability, and the final slam is targeted along the vector of the initial cast (like Taric's stun or Lucian's ultimate). Scales on total AD and bonus health. Cooldown: 9/8/7/6/5.
Designer Notes: I feel this is a much more interactive ability that lets us bake some more interesting skill tests into Wukong's kit. It also helps his jungling and gives more counterplay to his damage, letting us give him a bit more of an interesting pattern other than E+QQQQQ. A cool side-effect is the potential for multi-target Trinity Force procs if you get the line up properly, and the slow gives you a bit more stickiness and lets you play positioning games, which Wukong loves.
SMOKEPOPPY Wukong leaves a decoy behind him for 1.5 seconds, blinks to target location within 250 range and becomes invisible for 1.5 seconds. After 0.5 seconds the ability can be reactivated to detonate the decoy in a cloud of smoke, dealing DoT magic damage and marking all nearby enemy champions. If Wukong remains invisible for the full duration, his next attack against a marked enemy deals significant bonus physical damage and reduces their armor for 4 seconds. First portion scales on AP, second portion on total AD.
Auto-attacks against enemy champions and large/epic monsters reduce the cooldown of Smokepoppy by 1 second. Cooldown: 18/17/16/15/14 seconds.
EDIT: Added back in some decoy play, since it was deeply missed. Added the ability to detonate it early to retain its combat functionality in situations where trickery isn't needed. Additionally, the old "pretend to decoy and stand still" trick may be empowered now, due to the threat of the damage spike by the second half of the ability encouraging people to play cautiously when approaching a decoy.
Designer Notes: This design gives Wukong some interesting choices to make, as Smokepoppy becomes a potentially useful engagement tool at the expense of damage, or a potentially useful burst DPS tool with the counterplay of having to stick to your target (ala Fizz W). It discourages simply spamming it and attacking anyway, which is the current interaction in-combat, and the DoT ensures that he won't have jungle monsters reset on him. It allows him to gank safer targets at the expense of damage, and rewards him for managing to stay in a fight and building durability by giving him tricky options in the later game the longer he's alive.
Another cool side effect is that it removes the frustrating E+Q+W burst+escape combo that current Wukong has in lane, as if you use the W to escape you lose out on a large part of your burst damage.
NIMBUS STRIKE Wukong dashes towards target enemy, dealing moderate physical damage to the primary target, light physical damage to nearby targets, and granting Wukong increased attack speed for 4 seconds. The duration of the attack speed buff is paused while Wukong is invisible. Scales on total AD. Cooldown: 8 seconds.
Designers Notes: Very minor changes here -- the ability was changed to a pure AoE (because the existing model was hard to recognize), with secondary damage decreased to avoid too much wave clear. The attack speed duration is also paused while Wukong is invisible to increase your options to play around with the kit. E into Q into W (sticking to the slowed target) into almost fully attack speed uptime with the pre-charged E and the upcoming E gives a pretty great opening if you can afford to give your target the 1.5 seconds of time to react.
CYCLONE Wukong lashes out in a circle with a radius of 200, dealing physical damage, knocking up targets struck, and marking them with Dizzy for 6 seconds. For the next 6 seconds he can cast this ability up to two additional times after a 1 second cooldown. Targets with Dizzy are immune to knock-ups from Cyclone, but take 50% increased physical damage. Scales on total AD. Cooldown: 120/105/90 seconds
Designer's Notes: A common complaint is that Wukong's ultimate locks him out from other abilities, so I've build this one to engage in the more spell-based gameplay this version has. You can't repeatedly knock up one target, but you CAN now do some trickier plays like W'ing into the front line, knocking them up, E-ing to the back line, knocking THEM up, and hitting them a second time for increased damage.
#Core Build Black Cleaver and Trinity Force make up this Wukong's core build, as he benefits greatly from CDR, deals physical damage quickly, and casts spells frequently. Deadman's Plate helps him ensure his Q lands and keeps targets around for his W's cook time, and Titanic Hydra or Ravenous Hydra increase his DPS and grant him a little more burst.
From there he can build AD or Tank as he needs for the situation.
In the jungle he can rely on Warrior for increased offensive capabilities, or rely on his strong stickiness to have high uptime on Cinderhulk.
's E, minus the slow, but its not like champs can't have similar abilities, especially when they are in the same class.
potentially