Wukong the master of the iron staff

[Fallen_Echo]

Hello Tenno!

Today i want to talk about a frame what is in dire need of reworks and almost forgotten by the playerbase. Wukong the supposed monkey king who only has 1 useful skill and nothing more to offer.

Wukong has many problems and due to his skills i believe hes the least used warframe in the whole game, not even zephyr who got her skills invalidated with the parkour system update is this unpopular.

Im going to attempt to rework the skills he has and point out the problems of the current ones.

 

Passive: Tenacity.

Problem: While the bonus is "useable" its almost unnoticable and irrelevant today.

Fix 1: Change the ability to grant 1 extra second to the combo counter with every combo level, making it scale by the actual combo count. This makes it a good skill for melee focused players while also keeping the original feel.

Fix 2: The combo counter grants +5% flat status chance for each level reached for melee weapons and +2.5% for every teammate in 10 meter range. This is a more strategic choice for melee users what also benefit the team.

 

Iron Jab

Problem: This is a single target skill with some knockdown effect on its end. Its weak and barely useable, even for a first skill.

Fix 1: Change the attack movement from simple extend to a forceful slamming attack. Dealing impact damage in its whole lenght while knocking down every unit hit by it. Combined with the augement this attack creates an impact wave of 15 meters dealing max 4K damage.

Fix 2: Complete rework, see below.

Revork idea: Iron Strike

Just as in wukong legend the players gain the ability to multiply the staff at their will and use it as a spear type weapon.

Casting 1 now summons a staff in wukongs hand what is thrown at the enemy dealing puncture damage on direct hits and impact explosion on ground hit.

The puncture damage is affected by power strenght but its always half of what is the impact explosion capatable because this is a staff weapon mainly.

The  Impact explosion is affected by range mods and the original throw has unlimited range. Using the augement now creates an impact wave under wukong while still lauches him upwards like currently.

Increasing efficiency does not decrease the energy cost on this skill but makes wukong create an additional staff to be launched. Maximum 4 staffs can be summoned this way.

 

Defy

Problem: Honestly the only problem this skill has is that this is wukongs only useful skill.

No rework here.

 

Cloud Walker

Problem: Entirely pointless when you have defy, consumes energy when you move, slow and the stun duration is too low.

No fix here, this thing needs partial rework on what it is used for.

Revork Idea: Cloud Master

Wukong disappears in a cloud of mist granting temporal defense for his allies while gaining power from his enemies in the fog. Movement speed is normal energy drain, duration stun stays the same.

Players inside the fog gain +25% evansion and +10% chance to reflect projectiles (reflect is affected by power strenght and capped at 50% which can be reached by having 180% strenght).

Enemies inside the fog empower wukong by fuelling his rage. For each shot they make wukong gains 1 points of rage.

For 10 points of rage Wukong can summon spirit fires at the enemies by targeting them and casting again cloud walker.

For 100 points of rage Wukong can cast an Iron Wake, what summons his staff inside the cloud and violently crushes it into the ground making the earht shatter and create dangerous sharpnel effect. Damage is equal to 25% of Iron jab/strikes damage.

For 1000 points of rage Wukong can cast Consuming Rage. Wukong leaves the cloud and picks out his melee weapon, while in this mode Wukong loses health for each swing hit on an enemy but is invulnerable to outside effects and damage sources. His damage is increased by 50% and gains damage bonus based on 1% enemy max health. The damage increase is 100% on staff type weapons. Each kill increases impact wukongs movement speed up to +50%, status chance up to +100% and melee attack speed and range up to +50%. Kill increase is 1/kill affected by p.strenght but cant be greater than 5/kill.

Health drain is affected by efficiency and duration , base drain is 5/swing. Rage gain is affected by strenght. Casting Consuming Rage resets cloud masters duration. Consuming rage end when the duration ends or when Wukongs next attack would kill him.

 

Primal Fury

Problem: Akward animation, severe bugs, low damage/energy spent ratio. The most useless exalted skill in the whole game.

Needs the entire stance, animations damage redone from scratch.

Rework: Primal Fury

Honestly i wont gonna go in detail here because all this skill needs is fixes, damage boost and new animation stances and combos what are worth using.

The only thing i want to put here is that i wanted this to work with Consuming rage upper at the cost that it now drains 5 health for each enemy hit. Much harsher penalty when you want to use maximized power on it.

[mksov92]

I agree that his first ability is in dire need of a reword as of now.
Defy is what makes wukong one of my fav frames and works just fine.
His third ability cloud walker is fine as is IMO, I use it for its stealth potential all the time.
I also agree that the fourth ability needs some work done. Would love to get an augment like excalibur's chromatic blade for it.
All in all I really like that this frame can be used for multiple tasks instead of just being dps or stealth. If he gets a rework then I hope that they will keep that aspect of him.

[(PSN)TheHypothes]

He needs clones somewhere in his kit! He's been my main since he released, and I could prolly ramble for hours about him. I do prefer him keeping his niche as a solo frame that can roll into group and contribute, but doesn't always shine in that setting. A few group benefits would be welcome though.

 

Defy is fine, and honestly would indirectly be nerfed from its current state if we had incentives to build for styles that didn't focus on it so heavily. 

Primal Fury I agree. It needs a stance rework more than anything. Make it feel ... Just better in general. It can already achieve some crazy damage though if you're creative... And willing to dump a ton of resources into him.

 

Iron Jab I'd be fine if they went with Atlas style tweaks with a combo string, or a Gara style tweak where holding it down made it do something a bit different, etc. It does have purpose, but it could use a bit more.

 

Cloudwalker recently I was thinking could be fun to stay as a utility skill, but expand on it further by adding a second option. The monkey is sloooow. I think it'd cool if we could alternate between two modes. Keep the current slow/stealth version, then a second version where he hops on a small cloud and moves really fast (but has his options restricted). 

 

Anyway, just spitting this out rq lol.

[(PSN)Lei-Lei_23]

He does needs clones, but I can’t imagine where that could be implemented into his kit.

Iron Jab has an augment, that can’t be completely overhauled.

Defy is the primary use for his kit.

Cloudwalker is a very good skill for stealth and performing Self-AoE stuns.

Primal Fury is in dire need of a stance overhaul to match and sync with players that enjoy using Attack Speed mods and have less cartoony toy hammer animations in his combos. Imo, Chinaframe’s Wukong placed him in the right direction by making his exalted staff reach insane levels for crowd clearing. However, what I suggest is that there should be an algorithm in place where his staff is extended based on combo multiplier to something close to the length of Chinaframe Wukong’s Exalted staff levels, but coinciding with an overall damage nerf based on length achieved with a max cap on staff length to max nerf on overall damage based on that.

[AbstractLemons]

An augment for cloud walker could be to create spectres of himself as he goes into the cloud.

What they could do is make it so that when wu king leaves the cloud it doesnt immediately go away and lingers so it could be used as cover by making allies harder to hit/enemies less aware or damage resistance.

The cloud could linger for a set duration like 10 seconds? This way it can still be used for what it does now but have another feature so it isnt limited to the specific niche of sneaking around.

[Edzhang]

Maybe his passive could be changed to “everytime wukong do slam attack, there’s a chance that he will spawn 1 clone (max 6 clones) for 10 seconds”.. it looks like hydroid’s passive, but i think wukong has a lot of slam attack in his primal fury combo right now, so IF he’s not going to get stance rework, i think this passive will still benefit from its current combo.. also, there’s iron jab’s augment that supports slam attack play..

[(PSN)TheHypothes]

2 hours ago, Edzhang said:

Maybe his passive could be changed to “everytime wukong do slam attack, there’s a chance that he will spawn 1 clone (max 6 clones) for 10 seconds”.. it looks like hydroid’s passive, but i think wukong has a lot of slam attack in his primal fury combo right now, so IF he’s not going to get stance rework, i think this passive will still benefit from its current combo.. also, there’s iron jab’s augment that supports slam attack play..

I do like the idea of his passive being clones. I tried to avoid mimicking Hydroid in a previous suggestion in anolder topic, but that could work too.

 

Other options could be things like taking damage has a chance to spawn, dealing damage or killing enemies, bullet jumps have a chance to spawn one where he jumped from, etc. In any situation, putting a fair cap on how many could be out, a fair max duration, and possibly adding a small recast delay to prevent abusive tricks, etc could make it a lot of fun.

 

I don't personally like the cloudwalker clone ideas as much, cause it kinda makes him feel more stealth/hide style. Wukong is cocky/aggressive and his style should absolutely reflect that.

[(PSN)WINDMILEYNO]

This rework sounds really fun:) that being said, i hope flying through the air like a dementor is still a possibilty with cloud walker in this...everything in warframe is really just make believe, you have to pretend the abilities are cool, but cloud walker has no limit to how high or far you can go, so you basically can move around in a cloud, and i always imagined it looking like a dementor.

Edited January 15, 2018 by (PS4)WINDMILEYNO
Edit

[Fallen_Echo]

2 hours ago, (PS4)WINDMILEYNO said:

This rework sounds really fun:) that being said, i hope flying through the air like a dementor is still a possibilty with cloud walker in this...everything in warframe is really just make believe, you have to pretend the abilities are cool, but cloud walker has no limit to how high or far you can go, so you basically can move around in a cloud, and i always imagined it looking like a dementor.

Its still there it just doesnt slow you down.

[True_Naeblis]

Finally built Wukong, and he was a disappointment in every way. Defy is nice for what it does, but having it be a toggle, along with his Primal Fury--especially while channeling--is inefficient as can be. Defy can be hit if you see you're near death, but it doesn't at all feel like his kit synergizes well with itself, nor does the use of skills flow very well together. His 3 suggests that you should use it to escape or avoid danger, while his 2 and 4 suggest you should be wading into the middle of it, burning through your energy reserves in no time while doing so. He by far has the worst exalted weapon in the game, with the lack of full stat/mod draw on top of the inefficiency making it stand out for how bad it is. I hope something happens with him soon, he could actually be an interesting frame to use.

[DeMonkey]

13 minutes ago, True_Naeblis said:

 He by far has the worst exalted weapon in the game

You say he has the worst, I say he has the best.

Hysteria has shorter range and cannot easily be used permanently due to the high energy drain and inability to gain energy from Rage/Adrenaline whilst using it.

Exalted Blade cannot make effective use of the melee counter since the waves do not add to it.

Primal Fury can be used for as long as you want, allowing you to reach far higher numbers.

However, despite my opinion that that it's the best melee ability, melee weapons themselves are still far superior unfortunately. 

Also, Nekro.

Edited April 11, 2018 by DeMonkey

[True_Naeblis]

@DeMonkey Unless there's been a recent update to it, it doesn't even pull from all the equipped mods. While Valk may not be able to use it permanently, her invulnerability is a part of the weapon, unlike Wukong being forced to run two constant drain abilities for worse QoL than Valk as she leaves her Exalted state with the same health and shields she went in with. Wukong can still get shredded, and if he doesn't get finished off, come out of it all with no energy and low health to boot. His staff was also nerfed from the state that it exists in China, where it was actually a pretty amazing weapon from everything I've seen.

Excal can kill faster and at better range with his and it's efficient enough to spam if that's your thing. I'm not a fan of him, but his Exalted works. Valk can use hers with much better QoL. Wukong gets the poorest return on investment of the three, and his kit doesn't have nearly the synergy of others.

[MickThejaguar]

3 hours ago, DeMonkey said:

Exalted Blade cannot make effective use of the melee counter since the waves do not add to it.

That's a pretty weak argument for Exalted Blade being weaker than Primal Fury. Right now the melee counter's only real use is for weeping wounds and blood rush, neither of which work with exalted weapons. That said, Exalted Blade's augment puts it way ahead of Primal Fury since you can hit 100% status without the use of status mods, meaning you can use the 90% elemental mods instead of the dual stat mods, giving you higher base damage. And the 100% status shreds armor at a ridiculous pace. Exalted Blade is just a much better ability when factoring in Chromatic Blade.

4 hours ago, DeMonkey said:

However, despite my opinion that that it's the best melee ability, melee weapons themselves are still far superior unfortunately.

Melee weapons are superior to Primal Fury because Primal Fury doesn't have an added bonus like Exalted Blade or Hysteria. It's just a glorified melee. Exalted Blade has it's Chromatic augment which makes it the best status weapon in the game, and Hysteria basically gives you complete invulnerability for it's duration. Primal Fury doesn't do anything besides give you a sub par melee weapon. 

[DeMonkey]

7 hours ago, MickThejaguar said:

That's a pretty weak argument for Exalted Blade being weaker than Primal Fury. Right now the melee counter's only real use is for weeping wounds and blood rush, neither of which work with exalted weapons. That said, Exalted Blade's augment puts it way ahead of Primal Fury since you can hit 100% status without the use of status mods, meaning you can use the 90% elemental mods instead of the dual stat mods, giving you higher base damage. And the 100% status shreds armor at a ridiculous pace. Exalted Blade is just a much better ability when factoring in Chromatic Blade.

You seem unaware that the Gladiator set works with melee abilities.

[MickThejaguar]

2 hours ago, DeMonkey said:

You seem unaware that the Gladiator set works with melee abilities.

I was unaware of this but even still, my point still stands. This doesn't give Primal Fury any edge over melee weapons. You yourself admitted that Primal Fury was inferior to melee weapons while factoring in this knowledge. Exalted Blade and Hysteria both provide something that you can't get from a regular melee. Primal Fury's only benefit is an extremely long range.

[DeMonkey]

Just now, MickThejaguar said:

I was unaware of this but even still, my point still stands. This doesn't give Primal Fury any edge over melee weapons. You yourself admitted that Primal Fury was inferior to melee weapons while factoring in this knowledge. Exalted Blade and Hysteria both provide something that you can't get from a regular melee. Primal Fury's only benefit is an extremely long range.

I'm not talking about melee weapons though. I merely commented on their statement that it was by far the worst melee ability in the game. I provided my opinion that it wasn't, and have given logical reasoning as to why I hold said opinion.

I stand by that reasoning, Primal Fury is to me the best melee ability as it will outdamage EB and Hysteria in the long run.

(Primal Fury isn't that long, I'd class it as "staff length", not even polearm length :/)

[GPrime96]

11 hours ago, MickThejaguar said:

Hysteria basically gives you complete invulnerability for it's duration. 

If you build Valkyr for Efficency (not Efficency and Duration), her Invincibility can last for 3mins. She can also do finishers without using Paralysis since she got a charge attack and that attack gives her a guarantee finisher, slide attack a enemy with more damage than any tonfa in the game (750 at max rank. Ohma’s spin attack is 600), life steal without using healing return or life strike, can use combos or attack like normal. If nekros is in your team, her invincibility can last for 5 waves straight when built for Efficency and even with a unranked arcane Guardian. With Gladiator mods and true steel, she can red crit since she got a 50% crit chance. Since Valkyr got so much Armor, she can more energy back from Rage when she’s out of hysteria which would let you use the ability more. Her finishers can deal with lvl 180+ Enemies in Kuva Fortress with finishers like they are a joke. Hysteria keeps normal melee play but with a lot more damage unlike excal since you can’t do a charge attack and spin attacks would make you waste energy.

Edited April 12, 2018 by VPrime96

[MickThejaguar]

1 hour ago, DeMonkey said:

I'm not talking about melee weapons though. I merely commented on their statement that it was by far the worst melee ability in the game. I provided my opinion that it wasn't, and have given logical reasoning as to why I hold said opinion.

I stand by that reasoning, Primal Fury is to me the best melee ability as it will outdamage EB and Hysteria in the long run.

(Primal Fury isn't that long, I'd class it as "staff length", not even polearm length :/)

The problem with your "logical reasoning" is that you haven't actually explained any real benefits over Exalted Blade that would lead to it to being better, aside from critting a bit more. I at least gave a fairly detailed explanation for why I believe that Exalted Blade is better, it can apply statuses that reduce enemy EHP far while also increasing your own damage because of Condition Overload.  Also the reason I brought up melee weapons is because you said this:

16 hours ago, DeMonkey said:

However, despite my opinion that that it's the best melee ability, melee weapons themselves are still far superior unfortunately.

You directly stated that melee weapons were superior to exalted weapons, so I gave benefits that exalted weapons had over melee weapons and then pointed out Primal Fury didn't really have any benefit over melee weapons. 

[DeMonkey]

19 minutes ago, MickThejaguar said:

The problem with your "logical reasoning" is that you haven't actually explained any real benefits over Exalted Blade that would lead to it to being better, aside from critting a bit more.

I specifically stated that Exalted Blade cannot make good use of the combo counter. That doesn't just help with critting, that multiplies your damage. That is the single greatest benefit it has.

Whilst you might be able to easily proc corrosive on an enemy and reduce their ehp, I can multiply my damage by 3x fairly easily and hit guaranteed yellow and frequent orange crits.

But sure, I'll go futher. Primal Fury's RMB combo guarantees 2 procs, Impact and Blast. Blast counts as 2 ticks for condition overload. I also have 50% status chance with my build rendering corrosive procs rather frequent. As such I can make better use of Condition Overload as well.

Mobility is also better with Primal Fury, I can slide attack free from the spin and blind that slows down Excalibur and costs him more energy. 

Side note: Critting "a bit" more? Exalted blade has 15% crit chance, I can easily hit over 150% crit chance. That's a whole magnitude higher.

Whatever though, this is all just opinion. You like your ability, I like mine.

Edited April 12, 2018 by DeMonkey

[MickThejaguar]

10 hours ago, DeMonkey said:

Whilst you might be able to easily proc corrosive on an enemy and reduce their ehp, I can multiply my damage by 3x fairly easily and hit guaranteed yellow and frequent orange crits.

I believe that in the long run stripping away armor is far more useful than multiplying considering how much damage reduction enemies eventually get from armor. 

10 hours ago, DeMonkey said:

But sure, I'll go futher. Primal Fury's RMB combo guarantees 2 procs, Impact and Blast. Blast counts as 2 ticks for condition overload. I also have 50% status chance with my build rendering corrosive procs rather frequent. As such I can make better use of Condition Overload as well.

This isn't better use of CO. I can build for corrosive and blast on Exalted Blade while also adding an extra element because of Chromatic Blade. And I would have twice as much status chance, I would objectively be making use of CO since it procs on every hit. 

10 hours ago, DeMonkey said:

Side note: Critting "a bit" more? Exalted blade has 15% crit chance, I can easily hit over 150% crit chance. That's a whole magnitude higher.

In hindsight that's more of a poor choice of words on my part.

10 hours ago, DeMonkey said:

Whatever though, this is all just opinion. You like your ability, I like mine.

We weren't debating opinions. We were debating which ability is better. If it were an argument of which one I liked better then I'd probably say Primal Fury because I love Journey to the West. 

[DeMonkey]

24 minutes ago, MickThejaguar said:

I believe that in the long run stripping away armor is far more useful than multiplying considering how much damage reduction enemies eventually get from armor.

50% status chance is plenty for armour stripping. I can throw in Shattering Impact if I feel I need it.

24 minutes ago, MickThejaguar said:

This isn't better use of CO. I can build for corrosive and blast on Exalted Blade while also adding an extra element because of Chromatic Blade. And I would have twice as much status chance, I would objectively be making use of CO since it procs on every hit. 

Of course it is, in order for you to proc that many elements you have to sacrifice the corrosive armour stripping you previously mentioned, meaning you won't be stripping it any faster than me. I get Blast and Impact guaranteed regardless of damage type.

24 minutes ago, MickThejaguar said:

We weren't debating opinions. We were debating which ability is better. If it were an argument of which one I liked better then I'd probably say Primal Fury because I love Journey to the West. 

I was debating opinion, since i explicitly stated "opinion" in my first post.

To be perfectly clear, these are values I hold dearer than energy waves and status.

Edited April 12, 2018 by DeMonkey

[(PSN)ForNoPurpose]

Wth is this arguement? Exaulted blade and chromatic blade + condition overload is well known to be really really good. Fury on the otherhand is a joke and easily the worst exaulted ability.

 

Exaulted has really high direct damage and status chance, hysteria is a crit monster that can deal enough damage to ignore armor, everyone loves mesas peacemakers and ivara players never complain about her bow from what i see. Titanias guns make up for her terrible melee.

 

But wukong you never see using his 4 in any realistic setting because its much weaker than just using normal melee. His only good point is defy. His exaulted is easily the worst in the game.

[MickThejaguar]

6 hours ago, DeMonkey said:

Of course it is, in order for you to proc that many elements you have to sacrifice the corrosive armour stripping you previously mentioned, meaning you won't be stripping it any faster than me. I get Blast and Impact guaranteed regardless of damage type.

With the build I'm referring to, I'd have 3 elements to proc: corrosive, blast, and a base element depending on my energy color, plus a guaranteed impact proc from stance, and I'm guaranteed at last one of these procs per hit. Assuming you're only running corrosive you'd have a chance to proc corrosive, impact, or puncture but with half of my status you'd have a chance to apply one of these every two hits, plus the blast proc from the combo after six hits. We have the same number of procs but your chance of proccing two of yours is much lower than mine. And reapplying impact is further waste since you already a guaranteed impact proc. But your puncture is so low that you'll mostly be proccing impact, blast, and corrosive., meaning you'll mostly lose out on the multiplier from 5 procs, meanwhile my corrosive damage is just a bit higher than my blast and other element so my proc spread is pretty even. You would literally proc less often than me. 

[DeMonkey]

7 minutes ago, MickThejaguar said:

You would literally proc less often than me. 

If you dedicate yourself solely to that build, sure. I could however also dedicate myself fully to Condition Overload if I wanted to and proc just as much, although the build would probably royally suck, might be fun to try it though.

You're still hurting the rapid armour stripping you mentioned earlier, and I'm still dealing far higher damage numbers than you are.

Bored now. Tired of defending my opinion.

I'll repeat, you like your ability, I like mine.

[(PSN)ForNoPurpose]

I will say this. Primal furys stance needs more multi-hitting attacts. The current first two hits should be one press of the button, and longer much more ferocious combos need to bs implemented.. atm the only combo that is easy to repeatedly pull off without macros is the hold block combo which while nice can cause more problems than it solves fue to knocking away enemies...

The staffs entire gimmick is increasing range with combo meter but only slide attacks really benefit from this in any realistic fashion...

 

If primal fury had a polearm stance it would be godly.