Introduction:

Edit: If you don't like our concept, you might instead like this concept proposed by another player. It preserves more of Wukong's existing kit while also giving him some new tricks up his sleeve.

https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/J9QjfpF8-concept-wukong-update

This is still subject to change, it's been the labor of about a week's worth of discussions and we are still tweaking the idea as we talk more about it. Thought I should share it though and see if people have any ideas or feedback to add to it.

In our opinion, Wukong’s biggest issue is his lack of direction and the way his kit fits (or doesn't fit) together. As it is he is somewhere between a diver and an assassin, but we felt he would be better suited to be more of an assassin/skirmisher. We've tweaked his abilities to modernize them and/or to make them flow together / interact more as well.

We wanted to amp up what was fun about him, which in our opinion is the trickiness of the clones. Offering Wukong a way to use his E to trick opponents is a good way to serve this goal. And by giving him another type of clone effect on the ultimate, we create lots of opportunities for Wukong to out-play his opponents. But opponents still have fair counterplay, since it doesn't do too much on it's own and if they find his real body or if he uses the ultimate poorly, it will be easy to punish him.

Some of the abilities have had power added to them, yes, but we feel that this is okay because power was taken out of the ultimate. In other words we shifted around his power budget, rather than simply added to it.

tldr; Long story short we took the route of making wukong into a skirmisher / assassin who relies on his clones and his stealth to sneak around, and in and out of fights. He can use a variety of tricks and feints to fool opponents and to evade being caught.

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Passive:

Damaging an enemy with an ability grants Wukong X% bonus to attack speed (1/2/3 stacks for each enemy hit at levels 1,#,#) for a short period of time or for a certain number of attacks. Hitting another ability refreshes the buff and can add stacks. Caps at 6 stacks.

This preserves the attack speed he used to get on his E, but makes it more inclusive with the rest of his kit. We also considered something that gave him bonus damage on his next auto after landing an ability, but we scrapped it for now.

Q:

Auto-attack reset still, but it casts a narrower but longer-ranged version of Poppy's Q when he makes that attack. Enemies damaged by it still have their armor reduced temporarily.

We also considered replacing the armor reduction with a mark that let him deal bonus damage with auto-attacks to marked targets. Depending on the balance, it could have been consumed by the first attack or made to last for a duration.

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W:

Works exactly the same.

I love this ability and the fact that it looks the same to an enemy if you press W or press S is absolutely fantastic. It is perfect, and I wouldn't change it for the world.

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E:

changed so that the clones last longer (maybe as long as or just slightly longer than the W clone), and made drag-castable (like Taliyah's Knockup or Viktor's Laser or Rumble's Ultimate) to allow you to choose which clone's place you take when the ability goes off. Quick casting places you in the middle, dragging to either side will cause you to end up on that side.

Could also be changed to be a skillshot, kind of like Twisted Fate's Cards or Kha'Zix's evolved Spike Missiles, giving opponents space between the clones to dodge the damage if they're smart enough.

Making his E clones last a little longer, making the ability a skillshot (if implemented) and making the ability drag-cast seems like a pretty good modernization in our opinion. This makes it useful as a way to try to trick opponents, while also making it a little more useful in the modern league environment where enemies tend to have a lot they can do against him.

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Ultimate:

On cast he becomes invisible and loses control of his body (it stops moving). In his place a clone is summoned that he gains control of and can move as if it were his real body. This transition would work similar to how his W works, except that the "clone" left behind would be invisible instead of him, and that stealthed "clone" left behind would actually be his real body.

Wukong shares his health bar with the clone, meaning when it takes damage, he also takes a portion of that damage (like Illaoi's Test of Spirit).

Control of the clone lasts for some amount of time, during which any basic ability he casts is cast from the clone instead of him (with separate cooldowns for his real body and the clone).

When the clone expires it generates a smoke cloud that (maybe interrupts or grounds nearby enemies and) blinds / blocks vision for nearby enemies much like Graves' Smoke Grenade. Re-casting R dismisses the clone early.

We had a bunch of ideas that were variations on this ultimate but decided to settle on this one. If anybody wants to discuss the alternate ideas I can do that in the comments.

We replaced his existing ultimate because it works really well on a diver, but the rest of his kit is much better suited to a skirmisher or an assassin.

Health to his ultimate clone is linked for counterplay and fairness as well. He won't take as much damage as the clone takes, but this way he can't just use it to dive into enemies consequence-free, which would have been really unfair for opponents.

Conclusion / Prompt:

Share your thoughts below, especially if you can think of ways we might not have thought of that it could be abused or if it creates any anti-fun play-styles or interactions. I didn't explain all of our thoughts here, so I / we will answer questions in the comments below at some point this week.