Nathan “Lutzburg” Lutz, Riot Games’ senior champion designer, has explained in detail some of the big changes to Wukong’s kit in his upcoming rework.
According to him, over the past few weeks, he alongside the League of Legends developer team had redefined some goals they wanted to hit with these various adjustments.
Speaking on what has been done so far, he said Wukong now possess a very sharp win rate percentage, which is based on game time.
He pointed out that the changes would help smooth out that curve, in order to make Wukong more competitive in the early game without dominating team fights “with his innate tankiness and high burst damage.”
He further revealed that the game developers intend to add more tools to Wukong’s arsenal in order to make proactive plays during the laning phase. This has been described as some quality-of-life changes, which would shift Wukong’s power towards the early game instead of late.
According to Wukong’s passive will be completely changed and when invisible to the enemy team for at least one second, he gets a temporary physical damage shield. The shield is based on his maximum health.
He added that if he is eventually spotted, the shield disappears for a short period. This passive is expected to reward extended trading patterns, and players will dip in and out of the brush to re-engage.
His W ability has now been made to be an instant dash towards the player cursor, an adjustment made from it being from a short-range blink. The developer said the dash has a range of 350 units with 1200 speed and can’t go over walls.
Another notable change is that the clone he leaves behind makes it too look like a stationary champion who will attack nearby enemies. This will end up prioritizing the last enemy Wukong damaged.
Speaking further on the clone’s attacks, he said it would apply on-hit effects and apply 50 to 100 percent of the player’s AD based on the spell rank.
Meanwhile, the thick rate of Wukong’s ultimate has been increased to every quarter of a second. The damage, however, has been halved to compensate for this buff while the damage ratio per second got increased slightly. The bonus gained from movement speed is now a flat 30 percent.
All these changes are expected to take effect around December, but an exact release date is not feasible yet.
Written by: Oladipupo Mojeed
