Health Wu vs Lifesteal Wu, Pro Players Advise

GetMariahCarried·Oct 10, 2015·2 votes·936 views

Well, in a duel between the two, I fully expect lifesteal/arpen/bork to win, but IN GENERAL: Which do you think is better in S5 for dueling OTHER champs, teamfights, etc. with all the new bruiser items? So here's the two SPECIFIC builds I'm referring to.

IN THE LEFT CORNER, WE HAVE

Merc's
Hydra
Last Whisper
Cleaver
Bork
Randuin's, Visage, or some tank, or trinity if you're feeling cocky

AND IN THE RIGHT CO- oh wait he's also in the left as well DANGIT WU QUIT CLONING

Merc's
Titanic (probably just build tiamat first and wait on titanic until you get a few more of the following)
Cleaver
Trinity Force
Sterack's
Randuin's, or Last Whisper if you're feeling cocky.

In either case, I lean heavily on Wu's passive along with scaling armor/mr/cdr runes to compensate for Wu's lack of fighter tank. The first build is a standard for me that usually produces ridiculous KDAs in lower elo/teambuild. I imagine at higher elos, team's are more juky and will compensate for more glass-cannony wukongs. But at least for most teams I come against, Wu's w is very strong.

The way I see it, Wu's w is very much a melee adc type juke/block maneuver to compensate for lack of tank (aka Yi's alpha strike, Trynd's ult). Hence, you can get away with a lot of glass cannon if you know how to rock that clone with a lot of cdr, which you can if you don't burn it on every freakin' engage, like I see a lot of wu players do. I imagine at higher elos, clone engages are almost essential to even get in range, but at lower elos, you'll have plenty of opportunities to smack people's face in anyway.

In regards to glass cannon though, for wu, unlike standard ad glass cannons, that doesn't mean crit, since his ult does a ton of damage, but basically requires about 4 seconds of uninterrupted non-auto-attacking (although his e's AS boost synergizes nicely with bork still.) Hence, the correct way to go for him is primarily ad and max arpen, not crit. So I generally rush tiamat, than last whisper (normally you wouldn't THINK an early LW is good, but even against squishies, it's generally equivalent to 20 flat arpen. I've seen some interesting spikes against squishies early the moment I finish it.)

I used to get trinity, not bork on the first build, but to be honest, I've found bork to be the missing piece in turning wu into a master duelist against really health-heavy champions he'd usually struggle against.

Now the LATTER build is one I've been experimenting with lately. Instead of using lifesteal and my passive to compensate for fighter tank, I go ahead and get all the health a fighter needs and then some (plus that handy sterak shield), but still lean on my passive heavily for remaining defenses. I don't have as much personal tank-busting from it, but I still have pretty much the same damage for all other scenarios, and the combination of titanic, trinity, and sterak make's for some BRUTAL q's on squishies.

Critiques? Suggestions? Anything interesting you've seen lately in pro builds as a side note? Has the massive synergy between health-ad items been utilized a lot lately, or is it seen as too health-heavy, not enough other defenses? I just love stacking all of them simultaneously... even if I then get melted in some scenarios as certain champs TT.

6 Comments

BrascusOct 10, 20151 votes

Rammus

boosted frogOct 11, 20151 votes

Hi hi fellow Wukong player

I find your BOTRK build interesting though as a wukong player, I feel that wukong's role is to try and deal the most possible damage with his ultimate and finish off weaker foes with his burst + hydra, and thus I believe its best if wukong revolves around a full high-AD build such as:

Ravenous Hydra
BF-Sword family (preferably IE)
Last Whisper
Black Cleaver (for more armor shred and CDR + CDR boots for ultimate spam)
CDR boots (to spam ult)
A defensive item (or if you're fed, which is very easy to do in low elo with Wukong, another BF-Sword family item)

This build makes the best use of his ultimate scaling but he lacks utility. With this build he's best to have ignite (to increase kill pressure = higher chances of being fed) and flash (to make up for his lack of utility item)

This build, of course is an ideal wukong build if you want to carry with him but its also risky

A wukong can be built as a utility champion with items such as (but not limited to):

Youmou Ghostblade
Righteous Glory
Solari
Deadman's plate
Black Cleaver

Because people mainly (or at least I do) play Ignite + Flash top lane Wukong, they build damage but since people now use a bunch of teleport, sacrificing flash for tp (since ignite imo is very important on wukong) means you have to build a utility item such as Glory or Ghostblade (for engages that requires flash E+R)

I'll most definitely try BOTRK Wukong some time soon as it sounds like another good way to play Wukong (since he can be played many different ways of course)

It's nice to see someone be very dedicated to Wukong every once and a while since Wukong was my first main (I played strictly played him when i was level 1 to level 30 in S4 because i was too stubborn and cheap to buy other champs. And plus, Wu Kong is one of my favorite childhood heroes lol)

GetMariahCarriedOct 11, 20151 votes

YAY! A RESPONSE! THAT SAID SOMETHING! (Sorry Rammus, not raggin' on you. You're fine. Continue about your business.)

Regarding bork, yeah generally I avoided it along with all aa-synergy items because of borks ultimate. The main reason I started trying it was a 3s game against 3 champs with MASSIVE health. I didn't have bork, and I'd take out massive chunks of their health with max arpen and damage, but it never was enough. They'd always survived long enough to clean our team up, until they eventually regained a lead on the map (we were up in their bases by then) and won.

I tried bork next time that happened and it was perfect. I'd say it's still helpful for your ult because of the cutlass proc move speed booster.

Regarding engages, I have a tendency to use flash for those, but again, lower elo, pretty much no one expects it, so I get away with it flawlessly. Hence why i generally don't need utility items like ghostblade/righteous glory. I always wondered if I'd need those some day.

Main reason I don't use cdr boots is because I use 15% scaling cdr quints. I don't like to play a fighter without merc treads. Hate to think I couldn't cloak out because I was stunned.

If you don't like losing early/late game damage quints for cdr, here's a different cdr rune choice with interesting tradeoffs to consider:

scaling cdr GLYPHS + merc boots = 25 mr, 15% cdr, tier 2 move speed, and tenacity
scaling mr glyphs + cdr boots = 27 mr, 15% cdr, tier 2 move speed, NO tenacity.

Barring level delays on scaling runes (which are important, but I believe become fairly inconsequential by lvl 12ish), I could claim you're trading 2 mr for tenacity. Think about it...

boosted frogOct 11, 20151 votes

{quoted}

scaling cdr GLYPHS + merc boots = 25 mr, 15% cdr, tier 2 move speed, and tenacity

scaling mr glyphs + cdr boots = 27 mr, 15% cdr, tier 2 move speed, NO tenacity.

Thats an interesting combination to think about lol

Oh and I tried BOTRK on my last wukong game against a team that only had two tanks, in which both weren't relevant to the game (Blitz and Lee Sin) Though I thought I wasted gold because I didn't have any tank I truly wanted to kill, BOTRK worked out perfectly for me surprisingly The BOTRK made my Wukong a MLG split pusher (along with his E steroid) and quite possibly can be useful in taking down super minions if our inhibs gets destroyed. And also I was still able to burst squishies even when I had a BOTRK while knowing I can do relevant damage to tanks. Kinda like you trade off ~15-20% of your burst damage on squishies to gain a reliable ~20-30% more damage to tanks, which I find to be worth

Oh and about the utility items you should definitely try it out Allorim's reasoning for using youmou (idk if he's a fan of Glory) is so that his ult can get to the back lines of enemies and kill the squishies.

Btw, have you ever tried Muramana Wukong? Its meh but since the release of Titanic Hydra it opens Wukong to an interesting combo: (Trinity + Muramana + Titanic) (Have Muramana and Titanic Hydra activated) Wukong's Q procs the damage of Titanic, Muramana and Trinity Force at once If you build some crit and hope that his Q crits it's pretty funny to see his Q do massive damage, though you're also trading the potential AD that could be scaled into his ult if you choose to build Titanic/Mura/Trin

Either way, its a fun build that you should definitely try out if you haven't already. Smacking people with an empowered Q is funny, though you shouldn't use the build in a real game unless your team is content with your itemization LOL

Also in your original post you listed Sterak as an item that Wukong could use for a health build which I also find interesting so I'll be trying out Sterak in my next game

P.S.

I think BOTRK Wukong might be a thing; I need to test it out more but I feel like it has potential since I still did well with it against a team that didnt really have relevant tanks lol

Rammus

GetMariahCarriedOct 12, 20151 votes

Nice.

I found bork is pretty good for structure-taking, but trinity force is the best on that front. If you're gonna try sterac's, DEFINITELY do it with trinity, that'll make wu an objective-maniac.

I did try muramana ONCE in a bot match, because I was tinkering with infinite mana sustain options. Wukong always runs out of mana if you go into overdrive with ability-spam clearing mobs, etc. People say "manage your mana!" but I figure the faster you get from point A to point B, the better. So a better solution is always "get self-sustaining mana".

Now, obviously, in a bot match, it worked, because EVERYTHING works in a bot match, but I feel like it would take too long in general to charge on wukong. Having said that, I imagine once it IS charged, it synergizes really well with his AS boost, like bork does. I'd actually be curious to combo those two items.

'Nother thought would be essence reaver. Nice for the cdr and lifesteal too, but I always struggle with this choice on any champion. The extra lifesteal and shield on BT is so nice. I bet though with an Essence Reaver, Trinity Force, and Hydra, wu can become a nonstop split-pusher, for people sucked into those strategies (a bit of a crime to put a mega-teamfight champ into that role, but he's got a good kit for it.)

I build youmuu's on him occassionally, and yep, it's a good engager, good ult-damage booster, and, man I could swear the stats are bugged, 'cause that crit hits a LOT more than I think it would. Definitely good for back-lane assassinations.

Let me know what your long-term assessment of bork is, if you get around to it. I'm curious.

P.S. I did the math on bork once for any champ. Even if you're fighting a squish at 2k max health, that's 160 bonus damage on-hit at the start of a duel, dwindling to zero at the end, which leads to an average on-hit of 80 on squishies post lvl 15ish, give or take some depending on when you do most of your ability damage. So that, + 25 on stats, it's almost like getting an item with 105 AD for autos, and 40% attack speed, and lets not forget the active. It's good against any target in my book, unless you're caster heavy. Wu is solid on both auto and caster fronts.