Dev Workshop: Revisiting Wukong

[Cyba_Zero]

My first impressions from a few rounds of Hydron are that reworked Wukong is pretty fun. He feels like the intention was to create a frame with a melee focus whose powers are more like additions to his move-set, maintaining and expanding his movement and pace. The result is very fluid and intuitive, adaptable to many situations.

The clone is much better than his previous 1, dealing damage and generally looking cool 😎.

I'd say the main drawback is his cloud walker now being duration-based, especially as the duration is very short - no more laughing at sortie-Kayla's rockets for me 😞 - which also hampers its usefulness as a stealth skill. On the other hand it does work well as a fast repositioning tool, fitting well with the theme of the rest of his kit, and heals are always nice 🙂.

The new defy is reasonable, a good reactive move for when you see that big boss attack coming, but against smaller things there is the matter of oops squad killed everything before my power got to do anything (see also Khora's 2, Inaros' 4's swarm), although with experience of Nidus and his stacks this may be alleviated versus higher level enemies.

As for the staff - so much fun! 😄 It looks as cool as it always did, huge reach, better damage and the combos flow freely and intuitively. Forward takes you forward, on the spot stays more or less on the spot, and right mouse to gap-close - great! Certain current un-updated stances are such a pain when their basic attacks include a move that fires you across the room while you're trying focus on that bombard or heavy gunner that takes more than 2 hits to finish off; control over when you gap-close and when you stay put is very much needed and welcomed. Also, no more pause combos - which I find nearly impossible to execute when I wish to but often fire accidentally when I don't - is an excellent change. If it is still your intention, as per one devstream or other way back, to standardise the combos when you expand this to all melee so that certain key inputs result in similar results across all weapon types (such as walking forward executes a forward moving combo etc.), I look forward to it.

 

As for the new melee system in general - rather than just Wukong - there are three drawbacks. One is the inability to open fire in alt-fire mode directly from melee; you have to use primary fire first to switch back before you can use the alt, so you can't spit Quanta cubes or Mutalist Quanta orbs straight off. Second is the inability to manually block, particularly with regard to mods like guardian derision. Third and possibly going to be changed/fixed when the channeling side of the rework arrives is the (current lack of) ease and speed of using life strike. Also perhaps, while stance and charge attack changes are underway, you could take a look at the unnecessary half-swing before you throw a glaive/wolf sledge which renders it offputtingly slow in such a fast game (though that amalgam mod helps). Other than that, it's looking good!

[acezero]

Passive - Good on paper but terrible execution, there is a few mods that allow you to self heal and all for just for 30 60 sec of buff.. making this passive unreliable.

 Celestial Twin - rip Iron Jab, this new ability is Pretty legit, pretty much perm duality, but like duality, the AI SUCKS, twin using melee is a mistake, they have to get really close to start his animation even tho my melee range is longer than the freaking galatine, sometimes he got stuck on the wall, sometimes his aim is off, sometimes his when ahead to attack the enemy then come back and fore..

and you cant handshake your twin...DISAPPOINTING 😠

(Please release an augment allow 10 tiny celestial twin with the max of 15 but a cost of 30% hp max depending of how many you want to spawn...because pulling hairs is painful )

 Cloud Walker - this one receive a good buff, like...too good, able to heal while on cloud, moving on greater speed and the stun is just insane so good job!

 Defy - rip, i kind of like this, but oh well, rework of defy wasn't great, it's pretty much banshee 4 panic button, doesnt get the damage i need, taunt the enemy is a joke

 Primal Fury - Doesn't need to explain, it great, but once again, friendly AI cant melee S#&$

 

[(PSN)Vexx757]

From reading Wukong`s rework, it`s a big improvement. I glad that some ideas I had for him has been added to wukong.

Some of my idea sugesstions;

·       Wukong having the ability to use clones.

·       The clone’s survivability is based on wukong`s health shields and armour plus power strength.

·       The damage the clones can do to enemies will depend on power strength and melee mods.

·       (Synergy) You can increase the clone’s survivability by using the 2nd ability before you cast the 1st ability

·       Make it able to go through lasers, door barriers. (it won`t set off alarms)

·       Wukong does a wide range attack affecting enemies.

 

This is all well and good but I have more suggestion to add to him;

 

1st ability:

·       I think Wukong should spawn two clones or if clone dies, the clone splits to produce another clone. When this happens, they are very fast and powerful but have really low health.

·       Clones can use whatever stance you have in your melee weapon and stance from the 4th ability.

·       The movement speed can be increased by speed mods.

 

2nd ability:

·       You should be able to move while using this ability.

 

3rd ability:

·       If an enemy sees you while activating the 3rd ability, attack at your last location.

·       Sentinels and companions are invulnerable while activated.

·       The deactivation slam can brake crates.

·       You can go through grates.

 

4th ability

·       Holding the attack button will make wukong do 360 spin knocking enemies down.

 

Fix: When performing the animation, you can`t see the staff. (this has been like this ever since he was released)

Fix: Make the growing range of the melee weapon noticeable and effective.

[CodeUltimate]

There is no reason to use defy anymore it is just a waste of an ability.

[777Alexander777]

[TyrianMollusk]

7 hours ago, Agayek said:

When Wukong takes fatal damage, his Celestial Twin takes the damage instead

Cute idea, but I think when it happens you should also swap places with the clone, in proper "ha, that was really me over there" trickster fashion.

Also, I get why you want the clone using your guns during your 4, but I strongly prefer the clone 4'ing alongside me, because that feels more right and fun.  If the 4 isn't good enough for that, then the fix should be making the 4 better.  Either way, the clone AI needs much better melee skill, especially with the combos doing ranged point attack, local crowd slam, sweeping through, etc.  Clone needs some situational triggers and to gratuitously use just the first move from a different combo here and there (or buff it by letting it use combo moves entirely independently, much like how it isn't subject to player gun rules).

[ShockBurst]

Really nice rework! However, I think his non iron staff melee attacks need tweaking. He does very very short melee combos before pausing. He also takes long to reach enemies whilst using melees. This allows enemies like heavy Gunners etc to constantly knock it down before it gets close. 

Change:

Wukong doing a longer melee combo or repeating the combo twice before taking that odd pause.

Having wukong teleport close to enemies when using melee. This way he won't take so long to attack and wouldn't simply be knocked down a thousand times whilst trying to run close enough to attack an enemy. 

[TyrianMollusk]

2 hours ago, Cyba_Zero said:

(such as walking forward executes a forward moving combo etc.)

This is not actually good.  You walk forward a lot when you're sweeping through enemies, and this design seems ok on the surface, but what it really does is lock you into forward combos if you want to advance.  Better to use side directions and let you use the diagonals to trigger the combo while moving forward if you choose, or to move forward while doing some other combo of your choice.

[Agayek]

9 minutes ago, TyrianMollusk said:

Cute idea, but I think when it happens you should also swap places with the clone, in proper "ha, that was really me over there" trickster fashion.

Also, I get why you want the clone using your guns during your 4, but I strongly prefer the clone 4'ing alongside me, because that feels more right and fun.  If the 4 isn't good enough for that, then the fix should be making the 4 better.  Either way, the clone AI needs much better melee skill, especially with the combos doing ranged point attack, local crowd slam, sweeping through, etc.  Clone needs some situational triggers and to gratuitously use just the first move from a different combo here and there (or buff it by letting it use combo moves entirely independently, much like how it isn't subject to player gun rules).

The clone location swap was actually my original idea, but I have a feeling it would be difficult to implement on the technical side, and more than a little disorienting for the player, given where spectres can go/get stuck.  I'd certainly like them to try to build it and playtest it, but as awesome as it is conceptually, I have some serious practical concerns about it.

As for the 4, it's not a matter of Primal Fury not being good enough (because it is; I wreck 70+ enemies with the big stick without breaking a sweat).  It's that the clone using the stick at the same time removes one of the most interesting elements of Wukong: the synergies you can build for with your clone using a gun and you using melee, or vice versa.  One of, if not the foundational idea for the clone, from a game design perspective, is to open that space to the players to design a build to leverage it.

Unfortunately, that build space then goes away almost entirely when players active Primal Fury, as it forces players to either activate it and then not use it, or lose the new and unique build space.  Neither of these options are good from a game-design perspective, and it really should be addressed.

[gReMLiN1804]

even more reason to provide more loadout slots... more buyable loadout slots WHEN?

i really would like to be able to switch from one frame to another, even if i havent played it in weeks. sitting there some minutes to sort out the loadout, when i wanna play a less used frame is NOT FUN for me.

PLEEEEEASE let us buy more loadout slots.

[LSG501]

1 hour ago, Agayek said:

The clone location swap was actually my original idea, but I have a feeling it would be difficult to implement on the technical side

Well I'd argue the technical side is pretty much sorted already... loki safeguard switch/savior decoy, the grineer commander and arguably operator switching.

I doubt they'll add another augment from another frame into wukongs gear, he's essentially already got nyx's assimilate and equinox's duality as built in abilities.   It may end up as an augment though. 

I still feel it would be better to just revert to the old defy though rather than essentially trying to get the same function via another 'add on' to an ability but it's not going to happen, this is wukong now....

[Agayek]

27 minutes ago, LSG501 said:

Well I'd argue the technical side is pretty much sorted already... loki safeguard switch/savior decoy, the grineer commander and arguably operator switching.

I doubt they'll add another augment from another frame into wukongs gear, he's essentially already got nyx's assimilate and equinox's duality as built in abilities.   It may end up as an augment though. 

I still feel it would be better to just revert to the old defy though rather than essentially trying to get the same function via another 'add on' to an ability but it's not going to happen, this is wukong now....

Huh, sounds like the technical side is covered then yeah. 'swhat I get for not getting around to playing Loki yet.  I've still got some usability concerns, but the only way to know how serious those are is to try it.  Would be nice if DE went for it.  Fingers crossed.

[(XBOX)Adaptabilty]

17 hours ago, Zelmaya said:

Used Augment for Twin, cannot dismiss the clone as the binding remains same.

Hold 1 to dismiss without augment

Hold 1 to cast stomp with augment

Or maybe I am missing something, please enlighten me

 

They mentioned that you wouldn't be able to dispell it if using the augment

 

[Agayek]

To be fair, you can dismiss the clone with the augment, you just need to find a pit to jump in to do it.

[NytemareRhosyn]

11 hours ago, KittySkin said:

Umbral Ember its not beefy. Umbral builds helps frames with already high armor. Wukong gains 1500 armor from his defy, that combined with adaptation makes him absurdly tanky, specially considering that he can heal with just a button and a few steps and his clone draws insane ammounts of aggro out of him.

his clone does not draw agro, every dam missiosn iv done they focus fire me, over my dam clone. Only time it aimed my clone was when i hid behind things. as for umbral builds making things tanker you proved my point. o and dotn forget if you forget your armor buff and dont "reapply it" or forget that its short as #*!% cd. woops ho armor. o an recasting defy loses your last armor buff.which armor falls off for us at lvl 75+ enemies

[jcspeed00]

A little bit of constructive criticism after the update has dropped...

Most importantly and, I believe, highly requested: Being able to auto cancel cloud walker should extend to melee weapons the same way it interacts with primary and secondary weapons. I.e. melee attacks should auto cancel cloud walker. It would add to the fluidity of the kit.

My personal thoughts...

The armor cap on defy should be increased (or changed to work like nezha's halo or maybe dmg reduction like mesa 90-95%???) and possibly a slight increase to base duration for longer armor uptime and increased time to charge to current cap w/o sacrificing a mod slot.

The clones attack frequency should be looked at... searching for targets could be improved, but the clone should keep attacking as long as the current target is alive.

Bugs?

The clone sometimes uses ranged weapons when Primal Fury is being used. Intended? Also, clone is unable/refuses to use certain secondaries i.e. pox.

Stuck in slam animation while using Iron Staff. Most notably happens when slamming on or near defense target in Helene. (Apologies for the lack of video example)

Questions:

Does the clone benefit/add to the Primal Rage augment and if not, can that be added? Maybe he can have his own Primal Rage crit counter or maintains the counter if Wukong switches to ranged weapons while still channeling Primal Fury.

Positive note: Great rework all around! Wukong is no longer a one trick pony. His clone is a great change from is former 1st ability, cloud walker health regen and speed is great, R.I.P old defy but at least it still adds a lot to his ability to survive, and the Slash addition to Iron Staff and the status increase was much needed. All hail King Pablo, breaker of weak warframes, father of reworks, King of the Nor...you get the picture.

@[DE]SpaceySarah

 

 

 

 

[Automata]

Tried a few missions high level missions with wukong and to be blunt I did not like it.

First ability is a welcome change, Iron Jab or what it was called previously was very dated.

Cloudwalker, I don't like the idea of healing and not being able to attack, it's detrimental to to the update as the goal from what I can tell was to make him more active. This ability just slows it down.

Defy, I really really dislike how it works now, first of all, there is absolutely no need for brief invulnerability, in any "oh S#&$" moment you either die or evade incoming damage, there is no real time to use it before dying and if such a chance does pop up, the defy's invulnerability becomes futile as cloudwalker lets you evade damage, heal AND move at a fast pace. At base stats you get 2s of slow paced movement followed by 25s of higher armor. Armour is not great when it comes to damage reduction and it certainly doesn't make the Monkey God immortal. The change I would like to see is the invulnerability removed and replaced with just 50% base damage reduction (up-gradable to 75%) with 30s duration. And a blinding aura added to defy that has a 50% chance to blind enemies.

Primal fury, gives an exalted weapon that has no benefit of use. It could really do with some health regeneration, maybe an effect similar to that of Healing Return?

The passive, incredibly useless at current state. Perhaps energy color could dictate what passive gets used?

[DeMonkey]

13 minutes ago, NytemareRhosyn said:

which armor falls off for us at lvl 75+ enemies

I'd love to know how bad people's builds must be that they can't take armour based frames past level 75 enemies. Whilst running Mot earlier I was surviving level 75 enemies just fine, and that's with their 3x damage buff.

[NytemareRhosyn]

On 2019-06-13 at 2:26 PM, DeMonkey said:

Knew he wouldn't be left totally defenceless. 3 death defies per mission, armour buffs and self healing? He'll be totally fine without the garbage that is Defy.

I'm really liking the look of this so far, I'm even pleasantly surprised by the clone as well despite being vocally against it.

so a passive with three ticks perma gone?? so everyone else has passive for full duration?? 

On 2019-06-13 at 2:32 PM, DeMonkey said:

I'll take 3 instances of increased loot/energy/invulnerability whatever over an additional 2 seconds of combo time, which still leaves the duration so short I have to use a mod for it anyway.

^ wrong your "buff" is random you have no control over it. and i repeat earlier you only get "3 ticks" with noway to influence/gain more. Also for me that 2 secodns was a big #*!%ing deal when i only needed to add 1 combo cout=nter mod vs 2 so i can slot more dps. because early on i only needed a few extra seconds till enemies really started to spawn. 

and this also made a weapon i built around his passive now kinda voided till i reforma it and drop a dps mod for another combo mod. which i feel i did not  before this but i need now. 

On 2019-06-13 at 2:51 PM, DeMonkey said:

Can you explain how losing Defy's ez mode invulnerability has killed Wukong? Can you explain how Defy is actually a good ability in the first place?

Because really now, Defy does nothing in it's current state. There's no reason to go above level 100 enemies, and there's no reason to use Defy's invulnerability against sub level 100 enemies.

Plus it's not like he's completely defenceless.

because you would use defy with ha/rage builds and need to stay in combat while toggling on/off defy to not stay dead. to refresh an reset its "percent" heals. while also staying in combat to keep you energy up with ha/rage. at the current moment current wukong sucks in higher lvl/dmg content. you also statede in one post that this is to "shuffle" up things

 

yea it shuffled things alright. with how armor falls off(which btw his is hard capped) and late game you still get 1 hit. Going adaptation to try to survive longer makes it so 3 gives less armor making him still easy to kill cuz he cant get armor with adaptation reducing it. but you need adapation for hard content. atm "umbral" build or bust with him is just trash. 

Duration is moot on him other then increasing armor buff timer which is still timed and still adds another thing you have to micromanage

wukong atm is micro manage simulator. 

Track clone, Track hp of self/clone for heal with 2, track armor buff, defy when u need to survive better vs burst but lose last armor buff, energy drain on 4

meanwhile you have no way to keep track off your buff from passive unless u keep track within head how many lives have you lost? how many do you have left? 

 

so after tryign several combos, builds blowing forma and re leveling him. im just piissed off only thign that was decent was replacing 1 i guess? but i lose on my sduper jab that was off your melee weapons like atlas punch was. 

so

 

[NytemareRhosyn]

9 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

I'd love to know how bad people's builds must be that they can't take armour based frames past level 75 enemies. Whilst running Mot earlier I was surviving level 75 enemies just fine, and that's with their 3x damage buff.

because if you have adapation for later on it gibs your own 3 and its armor generation. and once again im assuming your useing umbral build all the way, which im trying to "avoid" because i prefer non meta builds but this just seems more and more like you must play x y z which as a meta breaker. is kinda urksome. 

hell in example while yes it ticked people off i went range/duration limbo to control tilesets an effective use it for arbitrations. and that armor buff has a tiemr you need to track or you get screwed out, even if i get that sweet 1500 armor mid combat forget about buff lose it die. does happen so its not really about "bad" builds. more like way to much that i now have to track that makes it very painfull and annoying, 

[DeMonkey]

4 minutes ago, NytemareRhosyn said:

~snip~

Someone's jimmies are rustled. I mean, to go back to my posts from last week and type a virtually indecipherable rant at me... 

3 minutes ago, NytemareRhosyn said:

because if you have adapation for later on it gibs your own 3 and its armor generation. and once again im assuming your useing umbral build all the way, which im trying to "avoid" because i prefer non meta builds but this just seems more and more like you must play x y z which as a meta breaker. is kinda urksome.

I don't know what that has to do with the price of fish. I survived against enemies beyond level 75 with 3x damage. If you're struggling against enemies at a basic level 75 then your build has to be poor or you're not a great player.

I don't have adaptation, I was using an unfinished build.

[NytemareRhosyn]

On 2019-06-16 at 6:58 PM, toyetic said:

Because it was 
A. not interactive - as they said in the workshop it was largely considered a set and forget ability where you could just press 2 and only worry about refreshing it maybe once or twice throughout the mission. Considering the rest of his kit was(or rather currently is) at best lackluster and at worst terrible this being his best ability meant you weren't playing an interesting warframe as much as you were playing a walking weapon. Which while some people found fun almost all can agree is a bad way to design a character.

and B. Wasn't that good all things considered. Yes being immortal in warframe is ok but is far from great. Frames like pre rework zephyr could be almost as immortal as wukong and were considered just as bad. Immortality is almost always worse than a frame being given damage/cc/ or buffs. If you look at a lot of other frames that can be functionally immortal such as inaros rhino and nidus they're considered great because along with their tankiness they have the ability to cc/dps/or buff a team in some manner. The ability to tank is an after thought and isn't something that in the current state of warframe is all that important 

so any one who used defy would have to recast it to refresh allot, because enemies in higher level content just 1 hit you. 2 in order for defy to stay active at all times you need rage/hunter and to stay in combat which meant refreshing your defy could kill you. i count coutn how many times i thought i was safe to fresh and got gibbed. 

having a passive that is nice till you used the passive feels bad. try runnign an arbi die from getting 1 hit/insta'd even with armor. then enjoy playing hide an seek cuz you know a have no passive, b have no way to reset it other then to get "revived" which puts team down a guy, your armor buff now must be tracked constatly sure you have an icon, but would flow better having your frame do a color pulse/ somethign to let you know its near ending so you dont have to constantly look off watching your own frame to check your buff, fact that recasting also strips your last buff combined with that your defy dmg is pretty bad vs grineer, armored targets, its just a knock down(if they in range) and 2 seconds of unvul( no mods)  

 

[NytemareRhosyn]

5 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

Someone's jimmies are rustled. I mean, to go back to my posts from last week and type a virtually indecipherable rant at me... 

I don't know what that has to do with the price of fish. I survived against enemies beyond level 75 with 3x damage. If you're struggling against enemies at a basic level 75 then your build has to be poor or you're not a great player.

I don't have adaptation, I was using an unfinished build.

i own adapation, which does gib his ability to get stacks for his 3, something that allows him to survive when his buff falls of. aka later on content. when armor scaling really cant keep pace with pure dmg reduction. 

[UltraLYT]

How is the reworked Defy more interactive?  In the old Defy, I was able to use different weapons to fight high level hard hitting enemies, and this gave a great feeling of a bad ass fighter especially in solo. 

Now, I can just spin around for few seconds just to deal some unreliable and unpredictable damage.  Moreover, the reworked Cloud Worker is far more useful than this in terms of cheating death by going invisible and gaining health.

Please improve the old Defy instead of completely removing it, thanks.

[DeMonkey]

4 minutes ago, modalmojo said:

How is the reworked Defy more interactive?  In the old Defy, I was able to use different weapons to fight the really hard hitting enemies, and this gave a great feeling of a bad ass fighter. 

Same reason a stage isn't considered interactive, you were using it as a platform for something else.