As we approach the end of 2019, Riot Games champion designer Nathan “Lutzburg” Lutz revealed today the final form of Wukong’s kit rework, which is now headed to the League of Legends PBE.
The major goals of the Monkey King’s update is to shift some of Wukong’s power from the late game into his early game, while also staying even in power throughout a match. Riot also wanted to make sure that Wukong’s identity was more of a tricky skirmisher who relies on mobility with his “hit-and-run” style of fighting.
Lutzburg also said that the developers did not want to place Wukong explicitly into the bruiser role, since they wanted to provide different viable build paths for both bruiser and assassin itemization. The developers will be reducing mana costs, adding in a powerful passive, and giving more satisfaction to his ultimate ability.
Here’s the official ability change list:
Passive—Stone Skin
- For three seconds after exiting brush or stealth, Wukong gains a physical damage shield equal to 12 percent of his maximum health. This effect can trigger once every 10 seconds.
Q—Wuju Strike
- Mana cost lowered to 25 from 40.
- Cooldown reduced by one second at all ranks.
- Damage adjusted to 1 AD +20/40/60/80/100 damage (+.5 bonus AD) from 10/40/70/100/130 (+1/1.1/1.2/1.3/1.4 total AD).
W—Warrior Trickster
- Now instantly dashes towards the player’s cursor instead of a short range blink.
- Dash is 350 range and 1200 speed. Can NOT go over walls.
- Clone is now treated as a stationary champion and will attack nearby enemies, prioritizing the last enemy Wukong damaged.
- Clone’s attacks deal a scaling 60-100 percent of Wukong’s AD based on spell rank and applies on-hit effects, but cannot crit.
- Clone looks identical to Wukong’s animation state on spawn, and animates as if he pressed the S key.
- Cooldown increased to 24/21/18/15/12 seconds (from the time of initial cast) from 18/16/14/12/10 seconds (from the time the clone disappears).
- Stealth duration reduced to one second from 1.5.
E—Nimbus Strike
- Now deals magic damage instead of physical but still scales with Attack Damage.
R—Cyclone
- Damage tick rate increased to every .25 seconds from .5 seconds. Damage per tick halved to compensate.
- Each tick of damage now applies Conqueror.
- Damage ratio increased to 1.25 AD per second from 1.1.
- Bonus movement speed is now a flat 30/40/50 percent instead of ramping up over the duration.
- E’s attack speed buff renews itself while R is active.
- Wukong can now cancel R early by casting another ability or recasting R.
The update will be hitting the PBE for the first week of January, according to Lutzburg. As always, these changes are subject to change and all the values can be adjusted before it heads to live servers.
