Wukong Revisit

[Xepthrichros]

10 hours ago, DeMonkey said:

Not sure I see the point in having nerfed it's duration so extensively however. Using it for a longer period of time necessitates spamming #2 as the ability ends to immediately recast it. Perhaps if we held #2 whilst in the cloud it could refresh the duration, and use up energy depending on how much duration had to be refreshed?

Stops you from afking in the cloud, doesn't rely on energy per unit of distance moved (as that would drain damn fast) and still means that by default it's a quick re-positioning tool. It can just be extended somewhat for a further cost.

Agreed, needs more duration. And attacking from cloud also didn't work for me. Maybe bugged at the moment? But to play devil's advocate, maybe they didn't give it that much duration as they didn't want him to outclass Ivara with augment, by just existing?

10 hours ago, DeMonkey said:

The spin damage is largely irrelevant, as Primal Fury hits almost as far and far harder.

Defy seems weaker than when they showcased it in the dev workshop video. Maybe they tweaked the numbers down since then after they witnessed the one-shotting of Vor?

10 hours ago, DeMonkey said:

It doesn't function as a gap closer.

Yes. Feel the same. When I heard gap closer, I thought he's going to get something like Valkyr's Hysterical Assault augment where you can aim then melee to jump a considerable distance to close the gap and continue meleeing. But what Wukong received seems to be very... not useful in comparison 

 

Hopefully some of these issues are simply due to bugs and glitches and not actual functioning as intended.

Edited June 20, 2019 by Xepthrichros
typo

[Agayek]

So having put a few hours in with Newkong now, doing a broad range of content, I feel like I've got a fairly decent grasp on the rework, both the highs and the low, and I'm gonna lay out my feedback for DE here.  Sorry if I end up word-vomiting a bit.  To start off, I think this rework is largely quite well done.  It's created a cohesive, synergistic kit out of a single button and a couple of half-baked ideas, while also staying true to the themes of the Warframe.  That isn't easy, and DE (and, to my understanding, especially Pablo) should be lauded for pulling it off.  But not all of it came out quite the way they intended, methinks, and there's some rough edges that could do with sanding down, and I hope my feedback here could be of use to them in that endeavor.

Now, let's get right into it.  I'm going to go through each individual ability, starting with his passive, and lay out my thoughts, along with suggestions for improvements:

5 Levels of Immortality
High-Level Feedback: From a purely mechanical perspective, this is absolutely fine.  Passives, as a general rule, are not hugely impactful, and this one fits right in, power-level wise, with most; 97% of the time it won't proc even once, let alone 3 times, but when it does, it's generally modestly helpful.  Better yet, that moment when it procs, when you go "I just died!  But I live!" is quite solid, it feels very much like Nidus' and that's a high compliment.  However, at the same time, it just doesn't feel very good.

What comes next is just... awkward.  The few seconds after that moment are either you being an unstoppable god or feeling screwed because you're not an unstoppable god, and giving RNJesus the power to determine that never feels good.  It feels like a punishment half the time, not a reward, as all your abilities should, and the disconnect makes it less than enjoyable.  Similarly, running out of charges on it and finally dying just ends up feeling frustrating, because your passive is just gone entirely.  This can create a negative feedback loop where, for whatever reason, you screwed up and died a few times, and then suddenly you don't have any of your passive's effects at all.  In essence, you get punished for using your passive, and that doesn't feel great, no matter which way you slice it.

TL;DR
Pros:

• Surviving when you were supposed to die feels great
• Power level is in-line with other passives, on average
• Strong thematic tie to Sun Wukong and the Journey to the West

Cons:

• Heavily random effects hamper enjoyment a fair amount
• Limited charges can create a negative feedback loop

Suggestions: 5 Levels of Immortality has some problems, but nothing conceptual or deep-seated mechanically.  It just needs to dial down the RNG and, like Nidus', have some means of regaining charges during a mission, and in my view, both of these can be solved by embracing the "trickster" element of Sun Wukong.  I would take this passive and change it to:

Quote

Monkey Business
When Wukong takes fatal damage, his Celestial Twin takes the damage instead and sacrifices all of its remaining health to heal Wukong by 75% of his maximum health.  This cannot occur more than once every 90 seconds, reduced by 1 second for each kill.

With this change, the core functionality is entirely intact, Wukong gets to show off his immortal bonafides, but the RNG elements are removed, both the lows and the highs, and the arbitrary limit of 3 is removed in favor of "if you can kill fast enough, you can use your passive infinitely", which replaces the existing negative feedback loop and failure spiral with a positive feedback loop.

Conclusions: On the whole, I think this passive is very good, and a huge improvement over Wukong's original.  It just needs some minor cleanup and it'll be fantastic.

Celestial Twin
High-Level Feedback: This ability is really neat conceptually, and again fits really well with Wukong's theme.  In addition, the way Wuclone uses the opposite weapon type Wukong does is a truly inspired idea that has a lot of potential for builds (the low-hanging fruit here is a high-status gun with a bunch of damage types paired with Condition Overload on a melee weapon).  It really is an excellent idea and in my experience it even tends to work fairly well.  The clone does some serious work, especially if you kit him out appropriately, more than enough so to make up for the fairly derpy AI managing it, and if the player micromanages it as well, then it really wrecks face.

Unfortunately, there's some niggling annoyances, and bugs, that tarnish the experience somewhat.  There's no real mechanical or conceptual issues with it, just rough edges that need polishing before it really shines.  For example, Wukong activating Primal Fury causes both Wukong and Wuclone to be running around with a melee weapon.  This breaks the fundamental promise made by the opposite-weapon-type functionality, and means you can't take advantage of one of the basic design pillars of this Warframe while using the other pillar.  It limits the player's creative space for no real reason, and it hurts me in my soul to see.  There's also a number of bugs regarding weapon selection, I've seen Wuclone stuck on using a gun even while I have a gun out, or using melee at the same time as me, or Wuclone only ever using my primary weapon instead of the secondary I had out a second ago, etc, but I'm sure those'll get fixed in the coming weeks.

TL;DR
Pros

• Extremely good concept with lots of potential for build diversity and depth
• Powerful enough to overcome AI deficiencies

Cons

• Buggy, though far from game-breakingly so
• Aforementioned build diversity potential nearly totally eliminated while Primal Fury is active

Suggestions: Celestial Twin is actually in a pretty good spot right now.  All it needs is for Wuclone to stick to its core mechanics when Primal Fury is activated.  Allow Wuclone to use guns while Wukong is beating people with Ruyi Jingu Bang, and be able to pull out its own Iron Staff if Wukong starts shooting baddies without deactivating Primal Fury (or in other words, treat Primal Fury the same as Wukong's normal melee weapon) and fix the bugs and this ability will be basically perfect (with its only remaining flaw being a need for spectre AI improvements).

Conclusions: So close to being great that it physically pains me that it stumbled as hard as it did right at the end.  A single fairly minor tweak would make this ability amazing.

Cloudwalker
High-Level Feedback: This ability is awesome.  It's a fantastic tool for both movement and survival that, while not nearly as flashy as the rest of Wukong's new kit, is the workhorse that quietly allows serious work to be done.  It's the real meat and potatoes of Wukong's survivability, as well as an excellent movement and CC ability.  It can take a bit of getting used to, and I still occasionally end up getting trapped on random decorations/map elements because of how fast Wukong moves as a cloud, but once you get used to it, it's pretty excellent all around.

The only real issue with it is that it's buggy, especially with regards to attacking while it's active.  I've seen everything from randomly teleporting 40+m laterally to the game refusing to attack at all, and pretty much everything in between.  I'm only able to successfully attack out of the cloud without major issue maybe once in every 5-6 tries, and I don't think I've ever managed it without any issue at all.  It's fairly reliable when used purely for movement, but attacking out of it definitely has some issues.

TL;DR
Pros

• Excellent workhorse ability that drives the bulk of Wukong's survivability
• Extremely good mobility

Cons

• Has a small learning curve, as the raw speed can cause collision issues until you learn to adjust
• Very buggy with regards to attacking out, to the point I don't even bother trying anymore

Suggestions: Just fix the bugs, that's really it.  Maybe also consider adding a "slow" mode to it somehow (a sprint toggle is the first thing to come to mind) to allow for more precise maneuvering, but that's far from necessary, player skill will accommodate it soon enough.

Conclusions: Excellent ability all around, good job DE.

Defy
High-Level Feedback: This is another awesome ability.  There's very little bad about it and a lot of really good things.  It's a pretty decent thematic tie to Sun Wukong, as "Whatcha got bro?! Come at me!" basically defines him for much of the Journey to the West, and is excellent mechanically.  It's a perfect "oh-S#&$" button, that does respectable damage and  synergizes with Celestial Twin extremely well.  On the whole, I think this is very well done all around.  My only meaningful complaint is that it's a bit too easy to misread incoming damage (or, more often, a party member comes swooping in and murders the dudes you were about to taunt) and overwrite a fairly new really high armor buff with a super low armor buff.

TL;DR
Pros

• Extremely strong thematic link to Sun Wukong
• Very well-designed ability that synergizes well with Celestial Twin

Cons

• Rapid changes during battle can neuter the ability to a sometimes extreme degree

Suggestions: What I'd like to see for Defy is a change so that if you recast it while the armor buff is up, it will only overwrite your armor buff if the new one is equal-to-or-better.  For example, if I dive into a group of enemies and Defy and get a 1500 armor stack and wipe them out, then 4 seconds later try to do it again, but right as I hit Defy, the Rhino in the party hits stomp and I take zero damage, I should still have my 1500 armor buff for another 21 seconds, instead of a 50 armor buff for 25.  And then, if I hit Defy a third time 10 seconds after that and take enough damage for 1500 armor again, I should emerge with a 1500 armor buff for 25 seconds.

I'm fully in agreement that Wukong shouldn't be able to refresh the duration of an existing buff, but it's simply too easy for teammates to (accidentally or otherwise) screw Wukong out of his buff, and that buff is a pretty big chunk of his ability to not be one-shot, so a change like this would be very much appreciated.

Conclusions: Excellent ability, but a bit too dependent on your team not using crowd-control or overwhelming amounts of murder to be truly effective.  It could do with being a bit less reliant on Wukong's team catering to him.

Primal Fury
High-Level Feedback: This is a really fun ability; the exalted weapon has roughly the same reach as God and the combos are a lot of fun, both to play and watch.  It's a treat all around, not to mention that it can be quite effective as well with the right build.  There's a good mix of damage and reach combos and, aside from a couple small niggles, the new combo system plays really well.  The rework has really brought it up to, well, par.  It's not an exceptional exalted weapon, but it's a solid B+, and I'm quite fond of it.

That said, Primal Fury is hampered somewhat by its anti-synergy with Celestial Twin, where Wuclone is rendered incapable of using guns while this is active.  In addition, there's a minor niggling annoyance with the right-click combos, as those always end with Wukong pulling his gun out, because you're aiming, and it just doesn't feel all that great.  It's not a huge problem or anything, but it's constant and that makes it an annoyance.  It will become something of a problem, however, if Celestial Twin is ever fixed, as that would change Wuclone's weapon unintentionally, and that could potentially cause problems, depending on the build.

TL;DR
Pros

• Powerful exalted weapon that's been brought up to in-line with most other exalted weapons.  It's no Excalibur, but it's very solid and a good central pillar for the Warframe to rely on
• New combo system is well-implemented and it's quite satisfying to use
• Visually very nice, though it can be a bit spastic with a Volt or Wisp speed buff

Cons

• Anti-synergizes with Celestial Twin, which discourages melee-focused builds from using it
• New combo system has some minor QOL issues

Suggestions: Fix Celestial Twin to treat Primal Fury properly as a melee weapon and have Wuclone use guns while Wukong hits people with his big stick.  Primal Fury really needs to have that synergy and build-design space, as it's a big part of Wukong's new kit and it's endlessly frustrating to not have it on Wukong's defining weapon.

I'd also suggest an across-the-board change to the current melee system, where right-click/ADS while melee is out does not pull out your gun, and instead just zooms slightly with your melee weapon still out, while left-click/fire while melee is out behaves the way it currently does, and in addition, hitting F with your melee out will switch back to the gun you were using before entering melee, not switch to the other gun you weren't using.  It's not a huge problem, but melee as a whole, and with Primal Fury in particular, would feel a lot better with a change like this.

Conclusions: Very good rework on the whole.  It's great as a stand-alone ability, but is held back by anti-synergy with the other core element of Wukong's new kit.  Patching that hole would make it truly fantastic.

 

So there we are, my review after probably about 8-10 hours playing the new Wukong.  I think this was a really good rework that doesn't really have any foundational issues, but there are still a couple pretty big holes in the framework.  If DE can fill those in, Wukong will likely be by far my favorite Warframe, finally dethroning Nidus.  I hope this was helpful toward that end, if anyone from DE ever reads this.

Edited June 20, 2019 by Agayek

[DeMonkey]

13 minutes ago, Xepthrichros said:

Maybe bugged at the moment?

Definitely.

15 minutes ago, Xepthrichros said:

Defy seems weaker than when they showcased it in the dev workshop video. Maybe they tweaked the numbers down since then after they witnessed the one-shotting of Vor?

Not so sure personally, I've seen it output some great damage at times. The Devstream and my own gameplay have come from Mot admittedly, where damage is enhanced and thus more is reflected back.

I did post a video of Defy one-shotting a bunch of level 160 scorches though, no armour removal or anything.

17 minutes ago, Xepthrichros said:

Yes. Feel the same. When I heard gap closer, I thought he's going to get something like Valkyr's Hysterical Assault augment where you can aim then melee to jump a considerable distance to close the gap and continue meleeing.

That's what I wanted Iron Jab to be, a targeted leap sorta gap closer.

Cloudwalker and slide attacks shall make do for now.

[Haranthus]

27 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

Why not use Life Strike? Allows you to kill things and heal at the same time. The Staff's damage output is so high that you can absolutely use a slot for it.

Helps a little, but not a lot - still end up having to lather rinse repeat the cloud walker ... still just getting popped through 1500 armor.  Went and tried a Kuva survival and just - oh you died ... oh you died ... oh you died ... 

Enemies were all like: "+1500 armor ... who cares?! LOL"

[DeMonkey]

Just now, Haranthus said:

Helps a little, but not a lot

You should be healing to full with every hit?

[Haranthus]

5 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

You should be healing to full with every hit?

Drains energy pretty darn quick and doesn't help in the face of level 40+ enemies that just pop your everything because piles of armor are largely worthless.

Reworked my build to fit Rage back into it to hopefully offset the cost of running my 4 and the channeling cost of life strike.

Also - it just locks you into a different "one style of play"

Old defy let me engage with my entire arsenal.  Nukong is not.

Defy should work like Nezha's Warding Halo

Edited June 20, 2019 by Haranthus

[Birdframe_Prime]

1 hour ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

I have no idea why this ability took such a hard hit in terms of duration.

I do, it's because it now heals you for a percent of health per meter you travel. Considering you can travel 50m really, really quickly, that's a base of 50% health every cast. With your strength even at 150%, let alone the easy 170% that you can pick up with some builds, you can regain 85% health with a single cast.

[DeMonkey]

2 minutes ago, Haranthus said:

Old defy let me engage with my entire arsenal.

Your entire arsenal, excluding any good abilities.

3 minutes ago, Haranthus said:

Drains energy pretty darn quick and doesn't help in the face of level 40+ enemies that just pop your everything because piles of armor are largely worthless.

Level 40+?

That's.... that's really low. You should absolutely be able to survive that level and higher, what's your build?

[Haranthus]

4 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

Your entire arsenal, excluding any good abilities.

Level 40+?

That's.... that's really low. You should absolutely be able to survive that level and higher, what's your build?

Spoiler

 

Took it into a Kuva Survival - was getting popped left and right through 1500 armor defy.

Edited June 20, 2019 by Haranthus

[Agayek]

6 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

what's your build?

I know you weren't asking me, but I've been screwing around with builds for Nukong all day today, and the best I've found is:

Steel Charge
Power Drift
Gladiator Resolve
Hunter Adrenaline
(Primed) Streamline
Transient Fortitude
Narrow Minded
(Primed) Continuity
Vitality
Umbral Intensify

It takes 4 Forma to get there with all the maxed mods, so I imagine a lot of folks will balk at the cost, but Nukong wants very high duration and power, with a little bit of efficiency and range being the dump stat.  I'm thinking dropping Gladiator Resolve for the Celestial Twin augment would probably be a good idea, but I don't have it yet so I can't say how effective that would be.  Also considering swapping Vitality for Umbral Vitality, but I haven't mustered the will for yet more Forma yet.

Edited June 20, 2019 by Agayek

[Mrs_Man]

Wukong's celestial twin tends to run at an enemy when using a melee weapon and then teleport back to the player right before he's about to swing because he ran too far away from the player (which really isn't far at all).

I think it would be nice if that range before he teleports back to the player was increased by quite a bit, otherwise the clone keeps teleporting back and forth and doesn't really do much when he's using melee, unless the map is small. 

[DeMonkey]

1 minute ago, Haranthus said:

  Hide contents

 

Took it into a Kuva Survival - was getting popped left and right through 1500 armor defy.

I'll give a Kuva survival a try today. Absolutely shouldn't be happening though. 

[DeMonkey]

1 minute ago, Agayek said:

and range being the dump stat

For now I'm going to continuing building for it, try and experiment as much as possible with Defy, but yeah, doesn't seem worth.

[Test-995]

Oh, and forgot to say something about his staff... i think it can be longer, for both defy and primal fury.

like, 2x longer.

Edited June 20, 2019 by Test-995

[TheGodofWiFi]

18 minutes ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

I do, it's because it now heals you for a percent of health per meter you travel. Considering you can travel 50m really, really quickly, that's a base of 50% health every cast. With your strength even at 150%, let alone the easy 170% that you can pick up with some builds, you can regain 85% health with a single cast.

And somehow that justifies a huge duration nerf? Other frames have insane healing abilities, yet they haven't been hit this hard. Besides, who actually asked Cloud Walker to heal players? That should have been part of Defy's new mechanics honestly. Honestly, I really don't see this as a justification for the nerf either. Cloud Walker in terms of mechanics, didn't need to be touched apart from the speed. It already made you invulnerable so you can get out of dodge and heal.

[Zharun]

Honestly the Clone needs to be changed to always use the gun you give him when summoning him. Like Equinox's Clone.

As soon as you use a gun yourself or go Ultimate the Clone becomes a useless onlooker because the AI just can not handle melee efficiently.

Basically forcing you to only ever use a meleeweapon if you want your clone to be useful which is sad since I was looking forward to having him give my Ultimate additional statusprocs for increased Condition Overload Carnage.

[(XBOX)Knight Raime]

I don't have access to him yet but I Agree with both your assessment and @Agayek

Suggestions wise I like his suggestion for the passive and the idea of clone only pulling out his 4 if you have your 4 active but a gun out.  (as currently I never leave my exalteds running in the backround.  This would be a good incentive for that imho.)  I mainly wanted to comment on defy since that seems to be a contention of differing opinions amongst people.  I do think that the armor cap should go higher or be effected via mods.  But adding onto that I think that the buffs you could gain from his current passive should be accessible from defy usage.

So rough ideas.  But like.  Say when you use Defy orbs always become more effective.  Killing x number of enemies or more will give you the extra drop chance.  the extended invincibility effect gets changed to be damage reduction when you hit max armor via smart defy usage.  So you get the armor plus a static DR value that lasts for a period of time.  And the invisibility will trigger for hitting x number of enemies with your defy or higher.  (kinda ran out of ideas for how to work invisibility in.  Would be fine if this effect was dropped in all honesty.)

 

[Agayek]

I don't agree that Wukong needs more survivability; between defy and cloud walker, he is incredibly tanky, and that's without any arcanes (because I can't be arsed to farm eidolons). It's just not the face roll ignore everything tanky; you have to be proactively ensuring your survival, when the enemies are high enough level.

People are just butt hurt that they can't afk missions anymore or something, it seems like. It's certainly not the total mindless infinite survival of old Degy, so yeah it was nerfed, but if you're actively playing, his survivability is not hugely impacted in my experience.

That said, if you really want to buff Defy, the best way to do it would be to make it so that Defy armor buffs stack instead of overwrite. For example, if you use Defy and get a 1500 buff for 25s, then use it again 8 seconds later for a 950 buff, you'd find out with 2450 bonus armor for 17 seconds. Then, when those 17 seconds run out, you'd drop down to 950 bonus armor for 8 seconds, then 0 after that.

Basically, each buff would be its own thing with its own timer that are all added together for his current bonus armor. This would synergize well with duration mods, as you get maximum overlap with longer duration, and be a good push for team support as it would push Wukong to be using Defy (and thereby taunting everything to attack him instead of his party) as much as possible.

As mentioned, I don't believe that's at all necessary, but it's what I'd do if I wanted to buff it.

 

Edited June 20, 2019 by Agayek

[Teridax68]

I'm obviously not nearly as experienced with Wukong as the OP, but I can agree with the assessment: Wukong's new core ability set is solid, and with some adjustments to bits of his implementation he could feel even better. My 2 cents:

• The new passive's alright, though honestly I feel it could be more interesting/consistent if the passive operated on a recharge mechanism, rather than a limited set of "free" revives (having three revives out of five also feels a bit thematically weird): if Wukong only had one self-revive at his disposal, but could recharge it through certain interactions, e.g. absorbing damage with Defy, stunning people with Cloud Walker, etc., he could get even closer to his old Defy fantasy, but in a much healthier way.
• The simplest fix to Nullifiers negating a clone's Iron Staff damage should probably be to have the bubble dispel the staff on the clone, and make it use some other weapon to kill the unit, before having it switch back.
• Cloud Walker I think is a good illustration of how bad persistent Energy drains are in Warframe, and how the mechanic needs to be reworked: in an ideal world, this ability would make perfect sense as a constant drain over time, so that Wukong could travel for as long as he liked in cloud form without having to refresh (and the same could be said for Nezha's 1). However, because constant drains have the particularity of disabling all Energy regen, they work horribly with Zenurik, which is one of our major sources of Energy, and thus the ability, like Nezha's 1, is on a fixed duration. At the very least, a duration buff would help, though ultimately we should just ditch the stupid mechanic of drains disabling our regen.
  • I can also confirm that attacking from the cloud feels inconsistent. This probably needs some fixing.
• I do think the damage and armor buffs are rather good, but I agree the ability could be done better. In particular, I find the forced spin and interrupt on Wukong's own actions to be fairly clunky, and I think that much makes the damage feels comparatively weak (because it involves holding back on one's damage for an extended amount of time). Here's how I'd change it:
  • On cast, Wukong and his clone turn invincible for a duration, scaling with Power Duration, and taunt enemies. This does not interrupt their other actions.
  • At the end of the duration, Wukong and his clone gain an armor buff based on the damage absorbed and Power Strength, which lasts for an infinite duration. While buffed, Wukong and his clone continually aggro enemies harder than their teammates, and each time one takes damage, a portion of their bonus armor is chipped away (with Wukong and his clone having separate bonus armor pools).
  • At any point, Wukong can recast the ability to consume the bonus armor, dealing AoE damage equal to a large multiple of it (with the AoE range based on Power Range).
• It's good that we're seeing a full Melee 3.0 weapon now, because I think there's a lot to be said about how DE needs to change direction on its new design:
  • I really don't think there should be different combos based on whether the player is standing still or moving, in a video game where the player is constantly moving. Half the combos on the Iron Staff in this respect I think could be removed without hurting the weapon.
  • Right-clicking/ADS is currently a gun-only move, which makes it all the weirder that it's a required input for one of the Iron Staff's combos. ADS I think should also trigger manual block, so that the input would make sense for melee weapons as well (also autoblock is horrible and should go away forever).
  • I agree with the OP that gapclosing in melee is already well-served by slide attacks and ground slams. I'd much rather my melee combos be about quick, highly maneuverable attacks, versus stronger and possibly more AoE-focused attacks (and the new Iron Staff moves have both, which is good), and not feature clunky gapcloser moves that I can't cancel out of.

So overall, I think the new Wukong's a significant improvement, and the first time I've ever truly had fun playing the frame. He's not perfect, and some of his implementation details I think suggest DE needs to really look at feedback and adjust their design for Melee 3.0, but nonetheless I think he's in good shape now.

[(XBOX)Knight Raime]

8 minutes ago, Agayek said:

I don't agree that Wukong needs more survivability; between defy and cloud walker, he is incredibly tanky, and that's without any arcanes (because I can't be arsed to farm eidolons). It's just not the face roll ignore everything tanky; you have to be proactively ensuring your survival, when the enemies are high enough level.

People are just butt hurt that they can't afk missions anymore or something, it seems like. It's certainly not the total mindless infinite survival of old Degy, so yeah it was nerfed, but if you're actively playing, his survivability is not hugely impacted in my experience.

That said, if you really want to buff Defy, the best way to do it would be to make it so that Defy armor buffs stack instead of overwrite. For example, if you use Defy and get a 1500 buff for 25s, then use it again 8 seconds later for a 950 buff, you'd find out with 2450 bonus armor for 17 seconds. Then, when those 17 seconds run out, you'd drop down to 950 bonus armor for 8 seconds, then 0 after that.

Basically, each buff would be its own thing with its own timer that are all added together for his current bonus armor. This would synergize well with duration mods, as you get maximum overlap with longer duration, and be a good push for team support as it would push Wukong to be using Defy (and thereby taunting everything to attack him instead of his party) as much as possible.

As mentioned, I don't believe that's at all necessary, but it's what I'd do if I wanted to buff it.

 

Obviously I can't say much because I haven't been able to play him yet.  But he's plenty survivable in star chart.  it's when you play higher than that, specifically when enemies start chipping you down via status procs when wukong's raw ehp won't be enough.  For frame of reference him and atlas share a similar bit of EHP.  Just Atlas being less consistent due to decaying armor.  And atlas isn't very survivable in higher content.  Granted wukong has a bit more cc to him and the ability to cleanse status/heal.  But I could still see him running into later end content and crumpling some.

My suggestions to add his buffs to defy are less about making him "tankier" and more just trying to preserve the buffs idea DE brought.  I do think more armor wouldn't hurt especially since it's reliant on enemy AI rather than something the player has control over.  Maybe if taunting actually removed the enemies attack cap and made them attack you constantly rather than at will it wouldn't be needed.

[000l000]

So far not much excited by Wukong rework. Previously Wukong was [cast and forget] defy for basic immortality and then run around spamming his exalted weapon. Both his 1st and cloud walker were more than optional.

Now i'm really sceptical cause Wukong is basically [cast and forget] his clone instead of defy and i'm basically running around bashing with his staff. Sadly Defy is no longer really needed and cloud walker is optional too. 

First Defy is all but reliable. Sometimes it deals damages and gives armor, sometimes you get nothing, blame AI here, i don't feel like Warframe can handle [decoy and retaliate] powers - It didn't work well with Nyx i don't even see a single reason it would work with Wukong. You just get stuck into some fancy animation for a few seconds, not much fun so far and certainly not mandatory if you don't have any trouble surviving. Scattering enemies around when dealing damages can be a pain too if you're looking for enemies to kill - Some people weren't liking that much in Baruuk's kit.

Could walker isn't much helpful either, i've tried using it as a travel power but one gets easily stuck in indoor levels cause it's moving way too fast. It's also a real pain to use as a finisher tool cause moving through it is awkward as hell and the stun effect is quite short. To get health back only it's quite a dumb power since it relies upon distance, so you have to fly circles to regenerate. I'm already using my operator to get some health back so i still find this power next to worthless and in the end i've totally stopped using it. Maybe its augment mod could make it worth though.

So basically wukong gameplay is basically the same, as boring as before but on the bright side power creep happened and he's dealing way more damages thanks to its clone, at least when it's actually working properly (upteenth spectre AI issues). Its leash is quite short so at least the clone isn't lost half of the time and it helps with meleeing but something should really be done about spectres and pets AI anyway.

So, more damages, less survivability, way worse energy management if you're using his whole kit (previous defy with a rage build was perfect to manage his energy, now rage is quite useless especially if you're building Wukong as an armoured powerhouse) and pretty much the same concerns about his fun factor than with its previous iteration. I didn't care much about damage especially since his staff has always been really powerful but i can't find a single reason to play more with him now. He's unnecessarily complicated and tbh not much funnier to play.

Edited June 20, 2019 by 000l000

[Agayek]

1 minute ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

Obviously I can't say much because I haven't been able to play him yet.  But he's plenty survivable in star chart.  it's when you play higher than that, specifically when enemies start chipping you down via status procs when wukong's raw ehp won't be enough.  For frame of reference him and atlas share a similar bit of EHP.  Just Atlas being less consistent due to decaying armor.  And atlas isn't very survivable in higher content.  Granted wukong has a bit more cc to him and the ability to cleanse status/heal.  But I could still see him running into later end content and crumpling some.

My suggestions to add his buffs to defy are less about making him "tankier" and more just trying to preserve the buffs idea DE brought.  I do think more armor wouldn't hurt especially since it's reliant on enemy AI rather than something the player has control over.  Maybe if taunting actually removed the enemies attack cap and made them attack you constantly rather than at will it wouldn't be needed.

 

I'm taking about post - star chart stuff; arbitration and ESO was what I mostly did today, with a side order of random missions of various levels. And honestly, most of Nukong's survivability is from Cloudwalker, not Defy. Defy is just your "don't get one shot" and "trivialize telegraphed attacks" button. 

It's the heal and cleanse from the cloud that does the real work. As long as you don't get one-shot (and the player is on the ball), Wukong is functionally unkillable. And with Defy up, you've gotta be at a pretty ridiculously high level to get one shot.

 

[(XBOX)Knight Raime]

1 minute ago, Agayek said:

 

I'm taking about post - star chart stuff; arbitration and ESO was what I mostly did today, with a side order of random missions of various levels. And honestly, most of Nukong's survivability is from Cloudwalker, not Defy. Defy is just your "don't get one shot" and "trivialize telegraphed attacks" button. 

It's the heal and cleanse from the cloud that does the real work. As long as you don't get one-shot (and the player is on the ball), Wukong is functionally unkillable. And with Defy up, you've gotta be at a pretty ridiculously high level to get one shot.

 

I'm totally willing to be wrong here.  Just hard to see without actually playing with it myself.

[Shonaney]

Increase the intercept movement range or just decrase the melee target range so the twin doesnt even try to chase targets to far away for melee.

 

[Birdframe_Prime]

1 hour ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

And somehow that justifies a huge duration nerf?

Apparently, yes. Not my call ^^