Lancer Stratus Wukong feedback: Pros and Cons
Hello, today I'd like to talk about Lancer Wukong and give some feedback to Riot that they could use in the future. Now the opinions of the skin has been pretty mixed. A lot of mains dislike the skin entirely, Some players feel like Wukong mains should be happy they even got a skin, while others still are just confused as to why Wukong was given a skin with a lance theme when he doesn't stab like you'd expect with a lance (its his E btw... it kind of looks like he's charging forward, staff pointing outward :L ). Here I will talk about some things that will maybe help shine some light into why people are not that happy with the skin. Now I'm not going to try to just bash on the skin cause in all fairness, it is a pretty good skin in its own right and does do some things that have been REALLY needed for a Wukong skin, but there are some things that may sound a bit harsh. With that said,
Pros
- The first true alternate fantasy skin for Wukong Wukongs skins have been very notorious for being all based around his Chinese myth namesake. Each of his skins aside from Underworld have a tie to Sun Wukong in a different point in the story Journey to the West, culminating with Radiant Wukong being the heaviest reference to the story as its pretty much as traditional Sun Wukong as you can get without giving him white and red face paint. Underworld Wukong was a step in the right direction, but still lacked the same creativity as its just an alternate faction version of Wukong (Wukong, but from the Shadow Isles), which can and is applied to almost every other champ. With this skin it fully creates an alternate fantasy of Wukong rather then what I would say is an "altered" fantasy of the existing lore. Its a pretty neat concept to think of Wukong as a giant robotic guardian of a city. On top of that, this skin line specifically reminds me of a Gundam more then any other (Battlecast feeling more like Terminator and Mecha feeling more like Pacific Rim to me) and honestly it would be really cool to see this skin line really fleshed out with an entire background tied to it.
https://i.imgur.com/KtPdNXk.png
- Has more thematically interesting particle effects then past skins Something else that ALL of Wukong's skins have shared were very similar particle effects. Each of them pretty much had the same cloud effects aside from Radiant Wukong, only Radiant and Underworld had unique Decoy vanishing icons and the ult most for most of them felt like it was little more then a color change. They never really felt all that unique aside from from a few minor things here and there. Lancer Wukong really steps it up by making his E into a rocket boost instead of having him ride on a cloud, making his Q glow with some kind of energy coming from containers in his staff and everything else pretty much just popping out more visually. It's not a huge thing, but its still really neat to see and I really hope Riot continues to play with the abilities in Wukong's kit to try to figure out even more interesting ways to change up the effects of his abilities in the future .
https://i.imgur.com/KtPdNXk.png
- Beautiful Splash art I mean, just look at this thing:
Riot really outdid themselves on this splash art. It really captures the idea of the skin being a guardian mech that protects this town that is in the splash art. Even though Lancer doesn't seem to have a real story beyond "Giant Guardian Mechs", this splash art still paints a really good picture of this concept in action.
https://i.imgur.com/KtPdNXk.png
Cons
- Missing some much needed features for Wukongs next skin
Long story short, Wukong has boring animations and VO. his aa is just sort of lazily smacking the enemy with a stick, his dance him flipping around, his joke is just making his staff stretch (not extend, but actually making the textures stretch out), his taunt is just him shaking his butt at the enemy and his VO was done long before interactions were a thing and a champ was lucky to get 10+ lines at all. Wukong has been needing a skin that would provide some unique versions of all of these for players to enjoy. Unfortunately this was not the skin to do it. Skins are a chance to provide some extra fun for players through all these unique aspects and it feels like Wukong keeps getting left out on that. At the very least he could have gotten a unique death animation seeing as it makes no sense for a robot to turn to stone, but that wasn't the case. While maybe giving him a new VO might have been a bit out of the 1350 RP skin range, I don't think it is too much to ask for some new animations to play around with other then a new recall and homeguard, especially when we see stuff like that done for other skins.
https://i.imgur.com/KtPdNXk.png
- Who is this skin for/Why does the skin exist? This is pretty much a skin little to no one asked for and what I feel is the major disconnect to Wukong mains. There wasn't many people sitting there thinking "you know what skin Wukong could use? a Lancer skin", if anyone even was thinking that to begin with. Lancer in a lot of ways feels like Underworld in the sense that its a 3rd wheel when it comes to other skins that share its theme. Now if the skin was Mecha or Battlecast, I can bet people would have been much happier just for the fact that those are skins that have been requested for Wukong, are very popular with plenty of champs to fill the skin line roster already in play and possibly popular enough to make a new random game mode for at some point.
Instead, Riot gave him what could be considered as a knock off Mecha skin. While it doesn't hurt for Riot to try and expand on less popular skin lines, it should be done with more popular champs who can get people exited for it. Ones that are popular enough to get people hyped for a skinline that hardly anyone cares for so they might get it just cause that champ is in it. If Riot's goal was to make the lancer skins more popular, Wukong is not the champ to do it. If it was to make Wukong more popular, this isn't the skin to do it. and if neither of these were a goal while also being a skin that no one wanted, that brings back the question of why was it made?
https://i.imgur.com/KtPdNXk.png
- A non-JttW skin for the sake of a non-JttW skin This one is honestly something I didn't think would be an issue cause I honestly thought that any non-Journey to the West related skin for Wukong would be great and honestly feels a bit nit picky to say otherwise. But then Lancer Wukong was announced and for some reason, it wasn't really that satisfying in that regard. While its nice that it doesn't reference the story in any way, I feel like this skin was ONLY made to fill that void. Like it it screams "See, we can come up with skins for Wukong that are not a reference to Journey to the West". This is something that, again, is nice to see, but shouldn't be a feature that we should be forced to beg for.
https://i.imgur.com/KtPdNXk.png
- **An unpopular champ for an unpopular skinline? ** Now this is just a question of marketing so this may be a bit beyond me, but if I made a champ who isn't very popular, I would try to make them a skin in a popular skin line to try and get more people to pick up that champ, if for no other reason then to get the skin for that skin line. But instead of that, Riot takes an unpopular champ and gives them a skin equally unpopular skin line. To me this doesn't make sense seeing as Wukong sure as hell will not be the champ to make this skin line stand out among the other 2-3 mech based skins that already in the game. Which raises the question if no one asked for it and it won't sell very well seeing as no one really wants to use the champ or the skin, why bother making it?
https://i.imgur.com/KtPdNXk.png
- **Still no Chromas ** With how little interest this skin has shown, it was a good opportunity to release Chromas for it seeing as Wukong has yet to get chromas for any of his skins and that may end up being enough to make some people who were not happy with the skin want to buy it since if nothing else, they could pick a color they wanted. Give it an Iron Man chroma and I can guarantee it would have at least made a decent profit. But with it being released, there are no chromas in sight. To make things worse, Rumble and Swain are getting Chromas for their skins:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/333012091051180033/430879552680624138/Capture.PNG
This would appear to show that Riot thought about who they should give chromas too and decided against giving one to Wukong for whatever reason, while giving one to Rumble and Swain, who just as easily could have gotten that chroma a few patches ago when he got the skin. Would it really be that much more of a burden to give Wukong 2 or 3 Chromas to go with this skin, especially when its reception wasn't all that great?
https://i.imgur.com/pEMQ6sZ.png
TL;DR - Pretty much this skin does do a lot right visual effects wise, but still falls short when it comes to what mains were really looking for out of Wukong's next skin. To partly quote Jurassic Park, Riot was so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should. Yes, they COULD release a skin for Wukong that no one asked for, for a skin line that no one really cares about, but it didn't feel like they stopped to ask is this what fans of Wukong will want or even care for. Weather it would be worth releasing a skin for him now or wait until someone comes up with a more fitting design.
But in the end, this is only Wukong's 6th skin and while he's not the most popular champ out there, he is still one of the few champs who consistently gets skins at regular intervals which can't even be said about some of the more popular champs. While I don't think this skin is something we should NEED to be grateful for just cause its a new skin or that its not Journey to the West inspired, we should at least be thankful for the fact that Wukong does get skins at regular intervals so even if we are not happy with this skin, Its not like this will be the last skin he will ever get. Just cause he got a skin that didn't hit the mark now, doesn't mean he won't get one that does in the future.
