Wukong the Monkey King Champion Guide

Wukong the Monkey King Champion Guide
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In the online action-oriented real-time strategy game League of Legends, Wukong the Monkey King enters the league with a ton of tricks up his sleeve. As a strong, physical fighter, Wukong excels at whittling down an enemy’s health bar with his abilities before going all in for the kill. In addition, Wukong’s abilities allow him to provide his team with excellent crowd-control effects during a team fight, thus sending enemy teams into disarray and providing a huge advantage to his own.

Masteries

Runes

Masteries, Runes, and Summoner Spells serve as the primary elements to developing the champions you play in League of Legends to their fullest. These elements provide a numerous amount of utility, including increased attack damage, durability, and better overall statistics to your champion. Likewise, they can serve to provide your champion with extra skills that can considerably change the pace of a battle, allowing you to escape what would have otherwise meant certain death or deal the killing blow to a fleeing enemy.

Masteries are contained to three sections: Offense, Defense, and Utility. Each summoner at level 30 is granted 30 points to place into any desired tree. The player can utilize these points in any order they see fit. For example, placing 10 points in each tree, 15 in two, or 30 in one. Wukong’s role in League of Legends is as a physical fighter with abilities that benefit from items with attack damage, therefore it is best to focus your mastery points into the offensive section. A typical build with a champion that focuses on an attack damage would involve most of the mastery points to be placed into an offensive tree, with the rest into defense or utility depending on user preference.

For Wukong, this often comes down to a placement of 21/0/9, which offers him increased damage as well as extra utility skills that include increased experience gain. However, because Wukong’s passive ability grants him additional armor based upon the number of enemy champions present, selecting a 0/21/9 build also greatly benefits Wukong in allowing him to survive longer in battles, and take less damage overall.

Runes and Summoner Spells

In addition to masteries, Runes also serve as an enhancement to your character’s base statistics. Being that Wukong is a physical fighter, runes focused around this point will benefit him the most. With IP (the in-game currency of League of Legends), runes can be purchased to increase your attack damage, durability against attack damage based skills and magic, and much more.

For example, a typical rune-page for Wukong may include:

  • 9 Armor Penetration Marks
  • 9 Flat Armor Seals
  • 9 Flat Magic Resistance Glyphs
  • 3 Armor Penetration Quintessences

In particular, armor penetration synergies with Wukong do significantly well due to his Q ability that deals damage to an enemy and reduces their armor for a short period of time. It is imperative to note, however, that there are a wide array of runes available that serve many different purposes, from extra health to increased movement speed. Depending on the user’s play-style, runes can be used in many ways.

Lastly, in addition to mysteries and runes, summoner spells serve as two distinctive spells a user can take with them into battle to grant them an upper-hand or provide much-needed utility. These spells may range from teleportation to an allied unit, healing, or increased damage against enemy champions, among many others. Choosing a summoner spell often depends on what role you are playing: support, mage, fighter, etc. While there are no right or wrong spells to choose, knowing which spells benefit your champion the most will provide you with the best possible strategy to winning. For example, because Wukong is a melee fighter, the summoner spells he may take might include Exhaust which reduces an enemies amor, magic resistance, and slows their movement speed. This provides a tremendous benefit to Wukong during one on one skirmishes against enemy fighters. Other spells such as Flash, which quickly teleports your character a short distance to the current position of your mouse cursor, allows champions like Wukong a much-needed escape mechanism, or the ability to chase fleeing enemies.

Team Composition

Team

Wukong exists as a melee, physical fighter. His primary role is to use his abilities to quickly enter battle and strike his opponents. He can send them into disarray with his ultimate ability that knocks down enemy champions, or escape with his stealth ability depending on the situation. All teams in League of Legends should have a clearly defined role, such as bruiser/fighter, mage, support, tank and jungler.

When playing Wukong, he will often be placed into the first role with other teammates selecting their champions around him or vice versa. It is imperative to have a well balanced team so that the enemy cannot simply build defensively to mitigate any damage.

For example, a team that deals only magical damage would not do well as the enemy could build magic resistant items to mitigate any damage given to them, and thus give them a very high advantage during a team fight.

Abilities

wuko

Wukong, the Monkey King**:**

  • Crushing Blow: Wukong swings his mighty staff with incredible speed, crushing his opponent. This attack deals additional physical damage and reduces the enemy’s armor for a short duration.
  • Decoy: Wukong utilizes his cleverness to trick his foes. He becomes stealthed for 1.5 seconds and leaves an uncontrollable decoy behind that will deal Magic Damage to enemies near it after 1.5 seconds.
  • Nimbus Strike: Wukong dashes on a cloud toward a target enemy and sends out images to attack up to two additional enemies near his target, dealing physical damage to each enemy struck.
  • Cyclone (Ultimate): Wukong’s staff grows outward and he spins it around, dealing damage and knocking down enemies. Wukong gains movement speed over the duration of the spell.
  • Stone Skin (Passive): Wukong’s armor and magic resistance are increased for each nearby enemy champion.

Wukong’s abilities synergize strongly with teams compromised of strong initiation. Wukong’s two abilities, Nimbus Strike and Cyclone, can be used together to deal a tremendous amount of damage to the enemy team while also knocking them into the air and making them unable to cast any abilities. This allows your teammates a great advantage to winning the fight.

Typically, the order in which you should level Wukong’s abilities should be as followed: R, E, Q, then W. This set-up is aimed at allowing Wukong to defeat enemy minions faster in order to gain gold, while also allowing him to deal significant damage with his Q and E abilities in combination with his R.

Item Management

items

Wukong is an incredibly versatile fighter. His passive abilities allow him to diversify into several different roles, i.e. that of a fighter or a much more durable champion focused on armor and magic resistance, but less damage. These roles should be played depending on the user’s play-style. A more aggressive player may wish to focus on increasing Wukong’s physical damage, while a more passive player may want to focus on defenses and supporting his teammates with Wukong’s strong utility in his ultimate. It’s important to note that Wukong should be built based upon your enemy team’s composition. If you find yourself dying too often, focus on defensive items such as:

  • Randuin’s Omen: +350 Health +75 Armor +25 Health Regen per 5 sec. UNIQUE Passive: 5% Cooldown Reduction and 20% chance on being hit to slow the attacker’s movement and attack speeds by 35% for 3 seconds. UNIQUE Active: Slows movement speeds…
  • Guardian Angel: +68 Armor +38 Magic Resistance UNIQUE Passive: Revives your Champion upon death, restoring 750 Health and 375 Mana. This effect can only occur once every 5 minutes.

In addition, dual-offensive and defensive items provide Wukong with excellent sustainability and damage in one. These items may include:

  • Atma’s Impaler: (Unique Passive) You gain attack damage equal to 2% of your maximum health. Effects: +45 Armor, +18 Critical Strike
  • Frozen Mallet: (Unique Passive) Your basic attacks slow your target’s movement speed by 40% for 2.5 seconds (30% for ranged attacks). Effects: +20 Attack Damage, +700 Health
  • The Blood Thirster: (Passive) Gain 1+ Attack Damage and +0.25 lifesteal per kill (maximum +40 attack damage and +10 lifesteal). Bonuses are lost upon death. Effects: +60 Attack Damge, 15% Lifesteal

Jungling and Lane

junglemap

Due to Wukong’s strong durability, his role in League of Legends is sometimes set between lane or in the jungle. Although it is less common, Wukong’s passive allows him to jungle exceptionally well, however with less damage and speed in defeating the enemies inside it. This role allows Wukong to gain experience and gold separate from the top, middle, or bottom lanes and allows the top lane to benefit from solo gold and experience gain. Upon reaching level 6, Wukong’s ability to “gank,” i.e. to assist an ally against an enemy in one of the three aforementioned lanes is surprisingly strong. With the red, lizard golem buff, Wukong’s abilities will both slow and knock back enemies to provide an easy kill to your team.

The second role Wukong may take is in lane. Due to his nature as a melee ranged fighter, he is often designated to solo-top lane or duo-bottom lane with an ally, often a supportive champion that will sustain Wukong with healing or provide him with increased damage and vision of the map.

The order of which to defeat the jungle monsters often depends on the champion you are playing. Due to his reliance on mana as a resource system, Wukong may often want to start at blue buff to allow him to use his abilities to their full extent. Although there are no clear-cut routes to take within the jungle, a typical route for Wukong may be as followed:

  • Defeat the large golem camp (passive buff includes increased mana regeneration, and reduced cooldowns)
  • Defeat the wolf camp
  • Defeat the wraith camp
  • Defeat the mini-golems camp
  • Recall to base
  • Defeat the lizard camp (passive buff includes increase attack damage, and slows the target enemy)

Because Wukong does utilize a resource system, he often wants to start at blue to conserve his mana in case the enemy jungler invades and to use his skills without worry. However, clearing the smaller monsters that do not grant buffs will allow him to clear the jungle much more safely, and very slightly faster.

References

This post is part of the series: League of Legends Champion Guides

A collection of miscellaneous champion guides for playing League of Legends.

  1. League of Legends - Champion Guide for Riven
  2. Champion Guide for Wukong in League of Legends
  3. League of Legends Guide to Akali
  4. League of Legends Guide to Playing Sona, The Maven of the Strings
  5. League of Legends Champion Guide: Olaf Pre-Game
  6. League of Legends - Ezreal, The Prodigal Explorer
  7. League of Legends Champion Guide - Singed
  8. League of Legends Champion Guide - Malphite
  9. League of Legends Champion Guide - Kayle
  10. League of Legends -Amumu, The Sad Mummy
  11. League of Legends: Playing Veigar - The Tiny Master of Evil
  12. League of Legends: Annie, The Dark Child
  13. Playing as Teemo: The Swift Scout