Wukong Revisit

[jxfireruby]

I don't anything needs to be changed. The stealth shouldn't be a copy of ash's or loki's stealth. Wukong's stealth serves a different purpose: to heal himself. I Buffing the duration would probably mean nerfing the current heal per meter. I rather keep the heal that integrated in his kit.

[TheGodofWiFi]

Honestly I get there there are certain people defending every aspect of the rework, but IMO it badly needs some tweaks and some of the changes have little to no justification (this is mostly in regards to Cloud Walker). So here's my full review;

Celestial Twin

Far better than Iron Jab that's definitely for sure. The clone does a decent job of acting as a distraction and can hit some enemies well enough if you have an AOE type of weapon, like say the Lenz or Arca Plasmor. Reminds me a lot of Equinox's Duality augment only a lot better. The augment for the clone, is kind of meh. It's okay having a mini-Rhino in your pocket, but it does suffer from the fact the augment takes your ability to desummon the clone away.

Apart from that though I really don't have many complaints.

Postives;

1. Decent distraction
2. Does good damage
3. Has a good health pool so the clone doesn't go down easy

Negatives;

1. AI is still a little clunky
2. Enemies sometimes still register you over the clone despite the clone being closer

 

Cloud Walker

Oh boy this is the big one besides Defy. Before the rework, hardly anyone used this ability. It sucked, plain and simple. But that was down to its incredibly slow speed and the bizarre mixture of having both an energy drain and a timer. Simply buffing the speed and removing the drain would have made the ability perfect as a method of travel and a nice get out of dodge ability when things got rough.

However, for some reason DE decided that they needed to attach a healing factor to the ability (which honestly should have been part of the new Defy mechanics and knock the duration down incredibly low. So low in fact that it basically didn't move the ability from it's previous state of being virtually useless. I cannot find any real reason for the duration nerf, even from Pablo himself during the pre-release rework stream. I've seen some people use the new heal as justification for the duraton nerf, but honestly that makes no sense either as other frames have very powerful healing and invincible abilities that long duration and in some cases are infinite, like Limbo.

All Cloud Walker needed was a speed buff and maybe an AOE blind when leaving the cloud, which would allow Wukong a brief moment to activate his new Defy soak, up all the damage and get his health plus some armour in one swing. This would also have still left it viable as a method of travel. Since he is the only frame besides Titania who can actually fly, it would have been a lot of fun to have this ability to have it's original duration, or at the very least be an energy drain ability. Maps are slowly but surely getting more and more open like with the new Gas City tileset. Flying around the open worlds and the more open tilesets would be a lot of fun if this ability allowed you more than five seconds in Cloud Walker and thats with high-end duration mods.

For those who think they wanted Wukong to be more interactive, they could have done this without hitting Cloud Walker so hard. Just focus on his new Defy and Primal Fury. Not every ability has to be spammed every five seconds and if you do like gameplay, you could have done that with the original duration. Just don't stay in it for forty seconds.

The augment has also been made less useful overall as now you can no longer build around being a mobile cloaking station for your teammates. The augment needed tweaks on its own in the first place in regards to it breaking stealth when attacking, but now it just feels like its not worth a mod slot at all.

In my personal opinion, it seems like DE's latest outlook of "if you're not spamming abilities every five seconds then it's not interactive enough" towards Warframe powers, is detrimental to this ability in a big way. Really, really hope DE take a second look at this while the rework is still fresh and feedback is still coming in, because at the moment, the ability just feels like it swapped one extreme for another for no real reason. Cloud Walker doesn't interfere with other players gameplay, it is not a broken ability and there are other frames with similar abilities that do not have such high-drawbacks.

Give it back it's original duration or make it energy drain based while keeping the speed. That is all it needs to be perfect and actually fun.

Postivies;

1. Speed increase is very nice.

Negatives;

1. Duration has been lowered to the barest minimum for no reason at all.
2. Healing factor was not necessary and should have been part of the new Defy. If anything the heal has been used by some to justify the nerf.

 

Defy

The thing that everyone was focusing on. Honestly when I first saw how it worked, I just felt more sorry for Nyx players more than anything else. After trying it out, I can definitely say it has the foundation for something great, but perhaps a few more tweaks to get to that level of perfect replacement for old Defy. As mentioned before, I would attach the healing mechanic of Cloud Walker to this ability instead. It makes more sense honestly as well. If you can siphon armour from enemies with it, why not health. It would also still be in keeping with the old Defy in that it heals you in a way.

Overall, I'm warm towards the new Defy. A few tweaks here and there, like increasing the duration a little (why has duration got the short end of the stick in this rework?) and giving the healing factor could make it a hard hitter in popularity for the tank crowd.

Positives;

1. Good synergy with the clone.
2. Nets you a decent amount of survivability with the extra armour.
3. Provides a bit of invulnerability on its initial casting.

Negatives;

1. Damage isn't that great at higher levels.
2. Healing should be part of this ability in relation to the old Defy.

 

Primal Fury

Honestly I never used Fury that much. I consider it one of the weaker exalted weapons. It's not too bad now, but I'm still not going to trade my Zaw for it. The drain is definitely not as bad as I was expecting, which makes a pleasent change. Don't really have any complaints about this one either, mainly because I still won't be using it and thus don't really have any investment in where the ability goes. Although I curious how exactly a bo staff somehow has slash damage, but I since there is a sword in the game (War) that somehow has impact damage as its main, I'm not really going to question it much.

Positives;

1. Increased damage.
2. Your clone can use it as well which makes for more overall damage output to enemy units.
3. Still has decent knockdown combos.

Negatives;

1. Still not as good as modular weapons IMO.
2. Combos still feel really clunky and swing at odd angels which doesn't really make the most of the reach of the staff IMO.

Overall, this rework has the potential to be a good one. It just needs some tweaks, some minor, some major. Cloud Walker is a major one and the ability I am most baffled by in terms of changes. Defy should retain it's healing factor. Clone could do with some AI tweaks.

Right now my rating would be a cautious 4/10 for this rework.

[vFlitz]

13 hours ago, DeMonkey said:

This bit I take back, as a gap closer this combo is obsolete. As a long range poke however... Mmm baby is it good. With Primed Reach you're hitting enemies 20 metres away. Honestly I'd say remove this combo, and make the stab attack the stance's charge attack but with better aim (you can only hit enemies on the same level as you currently).

In general it's the best opening against tough targets. I've checked for forced status procs in the stance, and the other combos have either none or a single impact proc. This attack though forces an impact and a puncture proc (the latter is especially useful as Iron Staff has no puncture anymore), which ensures that whatever you follow up with is going to hit extra hard.

I really find his passive underwhelming and would even prefer to have the old one, though. The buffs can't be planned for and used with premeditation, which removes all of their value. And the extra lives, well.. if you lose 3 lives, you're in all likelihood already in over your head and should leave the mission as you will lose the remaining ones in quick succession. Doesn't matter really matter if you have 1, 4 or even 50 left at that point.

I also don't feel like 1500 armor from defy is enough. Armor is less consistent as protection than DR and thus should be given higher values to compensate for that, not lower. From my tests it appears that by the time enemies reach level 150, he's only comfortably tanky around grineer. High damage corpus units hurt him dangerously fast, corpus snipers two shot him, and toxic ancients kill him near instantly with their AoE attack. By the time they hit level 200 he'll hardly be able to survive anything.

The clone, cloud walker and new Iron Staff though I like a lot.

[TheGodofWiFi]

7 minutes ago, jxfireruby said:

I don't anything needs to be changed. The stealth shouldn't be a copy of ash's or loki's stealth. Wukong's stealth serves a different purpose: to heal himself. I Buffing the duration would probably mean nerfing the current heal per meter. I rather keep the heal that integrated in his kit.

It's not just about stealth, it's about mobility and survivability. Cloud Walker functioned perfectly fine in the latter regard before as it already provided the invulnerability. The heal wasn't needed and IMO should have remained part of Defy, so he siphons health as well as armour when he swings his staff. It would make sense as well since the old Defy healed you up. Who actually asked for the heal to be on Cloud Walker anyway? No one. It'd take a nerf to the heal over low duration. Wukong has enough in his kit to survive already.

The stealth is a side bonus.

I find it baffling they nerfed an ability that already was in a bad place and that they justified it with a new healing factor that they themselves put on there. Cloud Walker could have been so much fun in this rework. Now it's just another "Spam this" ability.

Edited June 20, 2019 by TheGodofWiFi

[jxfireruby]

1 minute ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

It's not just about stealth, it's about mobility and survivability. Cloud Walker functioned perfectly fine in the latter regard before as it already provided the invulnerability. The heal wasn't needed and IMO should have remained part of Defy, so he siphons health as well as armour when he swings his staff. It would make sense as well since the old Defy healed you up. Who actually asked for the heal to be on Cloud Walker anyway? No one. It'd take a nerf to the heal over low duration. Wukong has enough in his kit to survive already.

The stealth is a side bonus.

I find it baffling they nerfed an ability that already was in a bad place and that they justified it with a new healing factor that they themselves put on there. Cloud Walker could have been so much fun in this rework. Now it's just another "Spam this" ability.

How much do you need to move to survive? Cause 50 meters is enough to get away from a crowd. 

[TheGodofWiFi]

9 minutes ago, jxfireruby said:

How much do you need to move to survive? Cause 50 meters is enough to get away from a crowd. 

It's not just about that. It's about having fun. Being able to fly is fun. Enveloping Cloud would also have beem far more viable for team play in late game, even more so if they had actually changed it. I still don't see why the duration had to be nerfed even with the heal, like I've said other times, other frames have huge healing abilities that have very little drawbacks.

Cloud Walker would have been useful for both survival and having general fun with mobility, traversing the open worlds and wider tilesets.

[Pandabarrel]

Not being super experienced with Wukong, having leveled him and then never touched him again, I really like the new Wukong. For my complaints, I think  Cloud Walker should be longer, not by much, I think 5 seconds base would be a good sweet spot (currently 2 seconds), also its been mentioned in this post, but attacking out of cloud is very inconsistent and should be improved. The Celestial Clone also seems to have issues using melee attacks, sometimes just looking at an enemy instead of hitting it. I wonder if this because the clone wants a clear line of sight to the target its attacking. I only used the Celestial Stomp augment a few times but it feels underwhelming, I felt like I was never able to hit enemies with its (with my 145% range) 29m radius. I feel like this may be because the clone goes and does its own thing without much of a way for us to keep track of it. I think a good way to help here would be a more noticeable marker on our clone besides the generic blue dot other players and spectres get on the minimap, at least while Celestial Stomp is equipped. This would allow us to see when the clone is closest to a big chunk of enemies to use the stomp on. Other than that, hes an excellent frame that i can use in any mission type, GG DE. 🙂

Funny story, I said hi to another Wukong in a public mission I was doing. But it wasnt another Wukong, it was me lol. Gave the other players a laugh though.

 

[vFlitz]

Actually, one more complaint. The supposed 'AoE' combo of Iron Staff, the right click while standing still one.

Since Wukong Slams the tip of his staff into the ground repeatedly, it doesn't really benefit from the staff's high range or having Primed Reach on. So the entire 'AoE' is the slams.. and slams do and always have done absolutely abysmal damage (well, with the exception of Arca Titron, but that's a different beast altogether). Slam AoE damage doesn't really scale with anything and falls off with distance really sharply, and even putting all that aside, they can't cover the kind of area that the staff can with a simple sweep.

[Colyeses]

As a smaller note for amusement: When I started using the new Iron Staff, I thought its length was determined by power range and/or reach bonuses, and I got very excited in trying a maximised range build. Sadly, the length of the staff does not seem to change, but that did get me hoping that maybe an appearance option could be implemented to make that happen? It'd be brilliant to walk around with an 8 meter long staff.

[DeMonkey]

43 minutes ago, vFlitz said:

From my tests it appears that by the time enemies reach level 150, he's only comfortably tanky around grineer. High damage corpus units hurt him dangerously fast, corpus snipers two shot him, and toxic ancients kill him near instantly with their AoE attack. By the time they hit level 200 he'll hardly be able to survive anything.

I don't consider this a bad thing, and have found a similar result by running Mot (level 100 enemies have the roughly equivalent damage of a level 180 and I was able to survive everything except a Nullifier).

Surviving against level 150 enemies is all that's needed for the game, pushing yourself further is great and certainly enjoyable, but unnecessary.

11 minutes ago, vFlitz said:

Actually, one more complaint. The supposed 'AoE' combo of Iron Staff, the right click while standing still one.

Since Wukong Slams the tip of his staff into the ground repeatedly, it doesn't really benefit from the staff's high range or having Primed Reach on. So the entire 'AoE' is the slams.. and slams do and always have done absolutely abysmal damage (well, with the exception of Arca Titron, but that's a different beast altogether). Slam AoE damage doesn't really scale with anything and falls off with distance really sharply, and even putting all that aside, they can't cover the kind of area that the staff can with a simple sweep.

Never has, likely never will. The slams used to be a fun sorta CC deal, but yeah, with the increased range actually hitting further than the slams would, you might as well just swing.

If the wave's size were increased and affected by Primed Reach, then it could be some fun CC again.

3 minutes ago, Colyeses said:

Sadly, the length of the staff does not seem to change

It does, Reach mods affect it.

[Colyeses]

6 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

It does, Reach mods affect it.

I changed it in the Simulacrum, and the visual length remained the same.

[DeMonkey]

12 minutes ago, Colyeses said:

I changed it in the Simulacrum, and the visual length remained the same.

Could have sworn it changed for me...

Regardless, it does change the range of the weapon, regardless of the visuals.

Edited June 20, 2019 by DeMonkey

[Colyeses]

Just now, DeMonkey said:

Could have sworn it changed for me...

Regardless, it does changed the range of the weapon, regardless of the visuals.

Yes, but that's my point, it'd be a funny touch if the visual range of the weapon matched the player's reach.

[DeMonkey]

7 minutes ago, Colyeses said:

Yes, but that's my point, it'd be a funny touch if the visual range of the weapon matched the player's reach.

Ah.

Eh, as an option. Nothing I'm particularly excited about as it would just look... awful imo once the novelty has worn off as it clips through absolutely everything.

[Ham_Grenabe]

I played a single mission (I'm not playing WF that much right now, but I wanted to try it out). My overall impression is that I like the changes for the most part - they're solid abilities, even if they're not the same as they used to be. They're also very visually exciting, but they're not that exciting to play. Wukong is still a fairly dogged "run at the enemy and kill them" frame. 

My biggest issue with the ability set is that attacking out of Cloud Walker is aggressively poor. In testing, Wukong will move 10 - 20 meters before slamming down in a pseudorandom direction, instead of slamming directly out of the cloud where the crosshairs are pointed. I'd argue that this is a bug (and will report it in bug reports), but it makes that part of Cloud Walker pretty useless. 

Otherwise...it's neat, but at the end I still thought "I probably won't play Wukong that much." 

[Xzorn]

10 hours ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

Obviously I don't have access to him yet but from what I've read and seen it seems like the whole idea for wukong is micro managing invulnerability. 

By which I mean you pick your moments when you use defy for a breather and moments when you use cloud walker to nope out. Sometimes using both. 

Not saying this is a counter point or anything just an observation. I don't think DE was attempting to make him another tank. I think they wanted to just make him more engaging as a melee frame and gave some extra survival stuff to do so.

 

He has a more evasive play style. There's no doubt about that. Two Panic buttons and his clone is hilarious with Zarr or similar weapons. At the very least his passive should be per revive. Mistakes will be made playing him and I think the only reason they limited it to per mission was the dumb Arbitrations revive mechanics. Two effects are really kinda bad also. He's a hard thing to mimic in a game since pretty much the only way to beat Wukong is to tell him he can't do something.

Both him and his clone do work but they die quite easily to high level Puncture damage even with 90% Adaptation. Two-shot in fact and you can't exactly panic button that type of burst damage very well. He's got about 17k eHP before Adaptation with Guardian x2. Maybe 20k with Umbras but that's not much. Maybe they will finally address the odd reason Staves have 60% Parry DR and Polearms have 80-85% because that would certainly help.

The sad truth of melee in Warframe is the best frames for it are either the tanks or invis frames.

Personally I think his Defy should produce Rapid strikes, like 10 in 0.5 seconds taking on the status type of his melee weapon. It will eventually devolved into an armor upkeep ability against armor otherwise. I haven't played with his Primal Fury much though it does seem to be overall just better esp since it can be mixed with things like Zakti while the clone keeps using it and the 25 energy Rhino stomp is pretty cool. He's not short on damage or tricks but Nullifiers often laugh at those tricks and yea I tend to use them as a parsing method because they're in 3/4 of the game.

Overall it's hard to mess up 1 ability to multiple abilities feeling better I'm just fairly sure the result is going to be less scaling potential.

[DeMonkey]

48 minutes ago, Colyeses said:

Yes, but that's my point, it'd be a funny touch if the visual range of the weapon matched the player's reach.

Spoiler

Long enough for you? 

Nice to know this visual glitch hasn't been fixed.

[Chaosdivide]

Just curious, but it seems like the kills made by the clone don't count toward your kill count.  I'm not sure that matters, unless kills made by clone don't actually generate xp/affinity?  I'm not sure how to properly test that, so I'm curious if someone already has done so.  Overall I like the rework to his kit.  Just wish that little armor gauge maybe flashed lightly when his armor was about to wear out tho~ my lack of attention to my hud gets me killed on duration based buffs alot =P but that's more a fault with me than the game^^

[DeMonkey]

13 minutes ago, Chaosdivide said:

Just curious, but it seems like the kills made by the clone don't count toward your kill count.  I'm not sure that matters, unless kills made by clone don't actually generate xp/affinity?  I'm not sure how to properly test that, so I'm curious if someone already has done so.  Overall I like the rework to his kit.  Just wish that little armor gauge maybe flashed lightly when his armor was about to wear out tho~ my lack of attention to my hud gets me killed on duration based buffs alot =P but that's more a fault with me than the game^^

It does, I'll edit in a video in a minute.

Forgetting about the armour is definitely an issue. Wouldn't mind a small bar around the reticule or something.

Spoiler

 

There we go, as you can see the kills counted and 100% of affinity went to my Warframe, as per normal for enemies killed by an ability.

Edited June 20, 2019 by DeMonkey

[Chaosdivide]

12 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

It does, I'll edit in a video in a minute.

Forgetting about the armour is definitely an issue. Wouldn't mind a small bar around the reticule or something.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

There we go, as you can see the kills counted and 100% of affinity went to my Warframe, as per normal for enemies killed by an ability.

My problem was I couldn't tell what my dog was killing and what my clone was killing~ finally dawned on me I could just leave my pet at home =P  Appreciate the vid tho!^^

[DeMonkey]

1 minute ago, Chaosdivide said:

My problem was I couldn't tell what my dog was killing and what my clone was killing~ finally dawned on me I could just leave my pet at home =P  Appreciate the vid tho!^^

IIRC affinity from pet kills goes to the pet, not you.

In fact, from the wiki:

Companions gain their own Affinity, similar to Tenno.

• The Companion kills an enemy. Total Affinity upon kills is equal to that gained by Tenno. The owner of the Companion gains no Affinity.

Edited June 20, 2019 by DeMonkey

[Chaosdivide]

Have you tested clone kill counting when you are in operator mode? Summon clone, switch to melee so that the clone is ranged, and then go and just stay in operator so you can ranged attack with him? I think that is what is causing it to stop counting.  It seems to work just fine if I stay in Wukee~ but not in operator with clone out

[(PSN)t3benji]

Wukong clones doesn't use every weapon like the Redeemer pretty sure there's a couple of others I'm pretty sure you are fine all the problems just want to make sure that this is brought to your attention

[DeMonkey]

8 minutes ago, Chaosdivide said:

Have you tested clone kill counting when you are in operator mode? Summon clone, switch to melee so that the clone is ranged, and then go and just stay in operator so you can ranged attack with him? I think that is what is causing it to stop counting.  It seems to work just fine if I stay in Wukee~ but not in operator with clone out

I have now, you are correct, being in Operator mode will mean that kills made by the clone are no longer counted.

Don't see much of a problem with this personally, I'm not planning on afking as my Operator anytime soon. Pop out, do Operator things, pop back.

[Chaosdivide]

8 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

I have now, you are correct, being in Operator mode will mean that kills made by the clone are no longer counted.

Don't see much of a problem with this personally, I'm not planning on afking as my Operator anytime soon. Pop out, do Operator things, pop back.

I wasn't afk'n, I'm just playing around looking at tactics for when I want us both to be ranged, or him to be melee and me on Unairu and giving him cloak so he can get the damage bonus for being hidden.  Won't make or break me, just trying to be creative.  I like finding ways to use my operator and warframe on the battlefield.  Umbra Excal, or warframes I make into glass cannons with persistent effects, like max range ember, equinox or hildryn.  My operator is far tankier that those first 2. I like to leave Hildryn near the party for shield buffs and wander into the fray with my operator~ stuff like that

Edited June 20, 2019 by Chaosdivide