Wukong ability rework.

[BusinessShark]

To be honest, while I do enjoy a good old-fashioned blunt beatdown with Wukong, his abilities do indeed need some work, especially in the synergy department. To put it bluntly, his 1 and 3rd are almost completely pointless in most scenarios. This can be addressed via a slight re-work and the introduction of ability synergies. To begin, let's start with his 3rd ability since, if reworked properly, will basically tie his whole kit together. His 3rd ability should be changed to a multi-option tap-hold ability type, similar to Vauban's 1st ability.

The 1st option would be to deploy a draining nimbus, that allows fast movement, and the option to either lock yourself to the ground or get 360-degree movement. Furthermore, there could be a lot of synergies. His 4th ability could benefit from being able to more easily close distances, and gain a new melee combo since he is flying on a cloud, involving 360-degree spins rather than slam attacks. His 1st ability could be reworked to shove enemies backward with a lot of force, similar to Banshee's 1st, but when on Nimbus, do a 360-degree swing.

The second option for his 3rd ability would be to deploy multiple duration based clones. These cost a minimum of 25, regardless of efficiency. He can spawn up to 4-6 clones at once, but they will all share a duration. For example, if he has 60-second duration on his third ability, spawning 2 clones will make each one have a 30-second lifespan, spawning 6 will split their duration 6 ways, causing them to each have a duration of 10 seconds. Upon spawning clones, they should have a brief moment of invulnerability to gain health and armor, similar to the effects of Rhino's iron skin (to scale). The amount of damage they absorbed should be multiplied, and this number would turn into an armor and health modifier. (Affected by power strength but capped at a certain amount of strength %) During this brief invulnerability period, spawned clones will not have duration ticked down, and will not attack, allowing ability duration to be properly split between clones. They all share the "iron skin invulnerability effect," with each spawn adding 1-2 seconds to the timer, (so they can all get buffed,) but the more clones you spawn, the more it is diluted among them similar to the duration. So this will be split 6 ways if spawning 6 clones, turning them into glass cannons. 

TL:DR: Wukong clones have iron skin invulnerability effect to gain health and armor when first spawned (to scale), spawning more than one clone splits this effect and total abilities' duration up among clones.

The clone would use the currently equipped gun/melee, scaling off of equipped mods on weapons. This is based off of power strength and will have a cap. and upon using 1st ability, would swing their jab in a small cone towards where you pointed your cursor to cast your jab, allowing improved crowd control. When using his exalted melee 4th ability, clones gain the ability to move, and use slam attacks for crowd control. The clone's iron staff does 20% of the damage of Owners, scaling with combo counter, (and potentially adding to melee combo as his passive.) Furthermore, to compensate for their damage reduction, they gain a range increase for better crowd control. This cannot be used at the same time as his nimbus, and vice versa, unless using an augment. The clones would have a max duration, and would not be affected by Defy.
 
Now onto his 1st ability. First of all, this should be free when using his exalted iron staff, for the same reason radial blind is free when Excalibur uses his exalted blade. By default, it could be reworked to shove enemies backwards with varying force dependant on ability strength, like Banshee's 1st ability. His 1st ability gains the option to swing in a small cone with a minimum range when the Iron Staff equipped. Each enemy hit adds to combo counter.  Also, when using the Iron Staff, the longer the staff gets (due to combo counter,) the more range is added to 1st ability, allowing it to slowly and steadily increase range. This should have a cap to stop people from hitting enemies all century then using their 1st ability in conjunction with a sniper scope to knock people over at ridiculous ranges.

I feel people may think that the clones may be a bit excessive, or replace mirage, but the clones are more comparable to turrets, since they are stationary, and provide crowd control rather than damage. I feel like this would make Wukong synergize well and be fun to play as. 

Augment for 3rd ability: Clones can follow Wukong via nimbus when he selects nimbus, gaining access to "synergized" versions of 1st and 4th ability. (Previously could not use both at the same time. Lowers clone max to 2 clones to stop an army of 6 clones following you around shredding rooms.)

Is this overpowered? Not really. The clones are expensive (75 energy each by default, I'd imagine), and will have a duration/ cost/ clone population cap. So let's say the duration cap is 60, I can spawn in a gang of 6 clones, each lasting for 10 seconds, excluding their 5-second "iron skin invulnerability" period. This will do large bursts of damage, but since each one only has a lifespan of 10 seconds, this will not be very energy efficient, and players will have to balance utility and optimal damage.

Edited April 15, 2018 by BusinessShark
Clarification.

[The_Royal_Derp]

Th idea of the duration splitting with the clones makes it far more balanced in my opinion as it makes the user decide between, do i want longevity, or would I rather have a large burst of damage in a short time at the cost of a lot of energy. The augment for being able to move clones with nimbus needs some work or changing because that might be abused because you could just energy pad, nimbus to a new location and repeat to drag clones wherever you want. Also how would you decide the amount of clones, as in a fight you don't have the time to spam 3 until the amount of clones you want is selected etc. Or would you just hold down 3 with a clone counter going up until you get the desired amount of clones selected? I feel the nimbus is essentially an archwing mode deployable in regular missions with an energy drain. I don't know if DE would allow that as we are not allowed archwing launchers in regular missions anyways so that will most likely not get added or heavily changed. Other than that it sounds like an interesting idea.

[(XBOX)Knight Raime]

Wukong and nezha fail conceptually because they were designed from an idea of an existing thing.  Where as DE typically comes up with abilities first and forms an identity after.  As long as both frames have to conform to their identities in the china perspective I don't think much can be changed.  IMO wukong is basically fine as is.  Jab could have a slightly bigger aoe.  and his 4 could benefit from certain mods.

[BusinessShark]

2 hours ago, (XB1)Knight Raime said:

Wukong and nezha fail conceptually because they were designed from an idea of an existing thing.  Where as DE typically comes up with abilities first and forms an identity after.  As long as both frames have to conform to their identities in the china perspective I don't think much can be changed.  IMO wukong is basically fine as is.  Jab could have a slightly bigger aoe.  and his 4 could benefit from certain mods.

While this is true, I tried to form my opinion about abilities that could be changed based on the legend of Son Wukong himself. I also thought that having synergies would make him more fun and less shallow to play as, with the duration split mechanic of his clones stopping him from having a slight hall of mirrors reskin. Sun Wukong in chinese mythology was essentially a god killer, capable of splitting himself into many clones, calling upon the clouds to do his bidding, and defying death. However, I do agree that reworking his abilities would probably depend on the Chinese demographic of warframe players since the warframe concept of Wukong is based upon their own myths.