Wukong was one of the primary targets of last week’s balance-heavy Patch 8.16 in League of Legends. Not only was he one of the strongest abusers of many burst damage runes that were nerfed, but his abilities were also nerfed directly.
As great as that is for anyone unfortunate enough to drop some LP to the Monkey King during his reign over the top lane, the combined rune and ability nerfs may have been too much. Riot seems to think so, at least, according to the company’s post on the game forums on Friday.
“If he remains as weak as he’s currently looking, we’ll want to do something for him, likely in a way that doesn’t add burst damage back (so something like sustained damage, tankiness, regen etc),” the post said.
In our opinion, this is the perfect way to go. If his damage were to be re-buffed in response to the previous damage nerfs hitting him too hard, we’d be right back to square one. If his sustained damage was raised, like maybe a duration increase on the attack speed steroid his E provides, he’d be more effective in fights without regaining the ability to meatloaf poor, poor marksmen in a single strike. Well, he can still get pretty close if he’s fed enough, but it’s not quite as bad as it used to be.
The post mentions that Riot wants to wait and see if the changes from last week stabilize a little more before pushing any sort of buff to the PBE. That being said, there’s a chance nothing will happen at all, and if something does happen, it could be as far away as Patch 8.18. If it arrives with 8.17, though, it should be here as early as next week.
