Riot Games’ senior champion designer Nathan “Lutzburg” Lutz has detailed some of the big changes headed to Wukong’s kit in his upcoming rework. He said that over the past few weeks, he and the League of Legends developer team redefined some goals they wanted to hit with these various adjustments.
“Wukong has a very sharp win rate percentage based on game time,” Riot Lutzburg said. “These changes should help smooth out that curve, so that Wukong feels competitive in the early game without dominating teamfights with his innate tankiness and high burst damage.”
Riot wants to give Wukong more tools to make proactive plays during the laning phase, make some quality-of-life changes, and shift Wukong’s power toward the early game instead of late, according to Lutzburg.
First, Wukong’s passive is getting completely changed. Now, when Wukong is invisible to the enemy team for at least one second, he gets a temporary physical damage shield based on his maximum health. If he’s spotted, the shield will disappear after a short period of time. Lutzburg said that this passive “should reward extended trading patterns” and have players dip in and out of the brush to re-engage.
His W ability is now an instant dash toward the player cursor instead of a short-range blink. The dash has a range of 350 units with 1,200 speed and can’t go over walls. Meanwhile, the clone he leaves behind is now like a stationary champion who will attack nearby enemies, prioritizing the last enemy Wukong damaged. The clone’s attacks will apply on-hit effects and apply 50 to 100 percent of the player’s AD based on the spell’s rank.
Wukong’s ultimate had its tick rate increased to every quarter of a second, but the damage has been halved to compensate for this buff. The damage ratio per second has been increased slightly and the bonus movement speed gained is now a flat 30 percent.
All of these changes should hit the PBE around December, but an exact release date isn’t set yet. Wukong mains probably hope the reworked champ will be ready by the time season 10 starts next year.
