SMITE Sun Wukong Detailed Guide

SMITE Sun Wukong Detailed Guide by Hawke34m

First, a little bit about myself.

I have played a lot of Wukong. I currently have about 5500 worshipers, 500 wins, 4000 kills and 10,000 assists on him. He has comprised 50% of my total play-time. I feel knowledgeable about him. However, every now and again I see a post from a new player asking for help with him, whether it’s item builds, general play-style, or just in general. I thought it’d be helpful (or at the very least interesting) to try and make a Wukong master thread.

This guide has 2 basic goals:

• To contain a guide written by myself on how I play Wukong and why.
• To be a general discussion thread about Wukong.   So, anyone who wants to shed some insight on Wukong, or just talk about the character in general, feel free to. All opinions are welcome.

Enjoy the guide! (This is my first big post so if the editing sucks I will edit ASAP!)

Description: This is a guide meant for Solo lane Wukong. That is the position I mainly play him in now, though I did main him as a Support in Season One. From Solo Wukong operates as a strong front-liner and off-tank.

Abilities: 1>3>2>4 This is standard for Wukong across all game modes. The 1 operates as your clear and poke, which is why we max it first. Wukong can easily rack up top player damage by poking out his opponents. The 3 operates as your biggest source of damage as well as your escape. The damage, cooldown and stun duration for Tiger-form all scale with levels, so it important to throw points into this skill when possible. The 2 operates as another easy to hit poke ability with only the damage scaling with levels. You could max this second instead of the 3 if you feel at high risk of ganks in lane. This supports a more poke-oriented style of play, and has recently become my preferred method of maxing Wukong’s skills. However, this ability order is still considered unorthodox so if you are new to Wukong stick with maxing the 3 second and the 2 third.

The Ultimate: This is getting it’s own segment because it seems to be a common trap that newer Wukongs tend to fall for and I still see people on the fence about how to max it. Take my advice: max it last. The things that make Somersault Cloud good are the heal, the CC immunity, the jump, and the decoy. None of those scale with levels. You’d rather get more damage out of your other abilities. Trust me.

Items: Start with a Bluestone Pendant or Death’s Toll (I prefer Death’s Toll), 4 health pots, 2 mana pots, and Hog 1. The core items you should shoot for are always going to be Runeforged Hammer, Stone of Gaia, Warrior Tabi, and Jotunn’s Wrath. Rush Runeforged Hammer or Stone of Gaia depending on what type of damage you’re laning against (Runeforged for physicals, Gaia for magicals). These items are both relatively inexpensive yet very effective.

Then pick up Warrior Tabi and Jotunn’s, in that order. We grab Warrior Tabi instead of ninja Tabi because Wukong is an ability-based character. Some people like to build him for autos because of the crit chance in his passive. Ignore them. The strong part about the passive is the protections you get. The crit chance is an outdated design choice.

After you complete Jotunn’s Wrath, build Stone of Gaia or Runeforged Hammer, whichever one you didn’t build first.

After this is where things get situational. If you are ahead, or if you’re just confident in your abilities, buy Shifter’s Shield. Shifter’s Shield’s passive, coupled with the passive from Runeforged Hammer and Wukong’s passive, means that Wukong is going to get a lot of protections and a lot of Physical Power when he gets low on health. Shifter’s Shield’s passive has a lot of synergy with Wukong’s passive in general, and I am a big advocate of buying an item on a god if it has synergy with their passive.

If you don’t go for Shifter’s, grab a defensive item. Hide of the Nemean Lion, Midgardian Mail, Spirit Robe, Winged Blade and Heartward Amulet are all solid investments as long as they’re bought in the appropriate situations.

For your last item, grab a defensive item.

Play-style: You are the front line of your team. Your job is to keep your carries safe while gunning for the enemy back line. The reason people think Wukong has sub-par damage is because they normally only notice him getting in a tickle-stick fight with another bruiser in Solo lane. Wukong destroys carries. The damage from Magic Cudgel, Master’s Will and Tiger Form will almost always deal at least 70% of a squishy targets health late-game.

In terms of who specifically to gun for, it’s always a good idea to keep an eye out for squishy, low-mobility targets. He Bo, Freya, Kukulkan, Ne Zha, Ra, Poseidon, Ah Puch, Artemis, Anubis, Zeus, Nu Wa, Vulcan, Chronos, Ah Muzen Cab, Isis, Thanatos and Ravana are all mincemeat to Wukong unless they start building a lot of defense, in which case they can’t kill you and they’re a lot less helpful for their team. You know how Ares makes carries buy beads? Wukong makes carries buy armor.

If you ever find yourself in a rough spot, and a teammate offers to help AT THE RISK OF DYING, spam VRS (Save Yourself. C’mon, you guys knew that). Wukong should never need back up; he’s got his passive, his 3, and his ult all working to make him the hardest god to kill in the game. Being Wukong means your team has one less person to worry about because you should be able to take care of yourself.

72 Transformations: To Escape or to Engage?: This is a big one and the first thing I had to learn to get good as Wukong. Your 3 gives you a lot of things. Great damage, good CC, great escapes, but not all at once. Knowing what form to use and when is a bit of an art that high level Wukongs have honed through experience. In general, this is how to most effectively use each form.

Eagle: Escaping, rotating, chasing. This form is immune to Slows and Roots. If those are the only forms of cc at risk of impeding your escape, this is the form to use.

Tiger: Single target damage, Single target crowd-control. NO IMMUNITIES. Don’t start charging at someone with this form from far away unless you’re chasing for a kill or your target DOES NOT SEE YOU.

Ox Form: Multi-target damage, Multi target crowd-control, escaping when you need to run THROUGH enemies instead of away from them. This form is immune to slows, roots AND Knock-ups! Use this to escape instead of bird if the enemy team has a Geb, Bacchus, Tyr, Anhur, Sylvanus, Hou Yi, Hercules, He Bo, Vulcan or Sobek who are at IMMEDIATE risk of interrupting your escape. This is the “armored transport” form, as opposed to Eagle form being the “getaway car” form.

Aside from these basics though, when do I use them? If my team and the enemy team are having a stand off with a fight about to break out, what do I do? These questions are easily answered with experience, but in general, it all comes down to thinking ahead. You need to think, if I tiger-formed into their team, what would most likely happen? This isn’t always obvious. If the enemy team has a Ymir (stun), or an Ares (cripple), or a Poseidon (cripple + slow), do not engage. They will interrupt tiger form and their whole team will dog-pile you before you have a chance to move. Tiger form is very risky to engage with from far away, since you are at risk of getting CC’d, body-blocked, or juked, and you’ll be without an escape.

Only engage with Tiger form when you KNOW you have a 100% shot of landing the stun. If you can just run up to a carry and tiger them in the face, that’s fine, but another easy way of making sure you can land the stun is by flanking the enemy team. If you successfully get behind the enemy team and initiate onto a carry, several things can happen, all of which are great for you and your team.

*The enemy front-line turns around to protect their carries and move to get between you and their carries. This sounds very good for the enemy team on paper… if they weren’t then exposing their back-line to the rest of your team. You can picture how that would end up.

*The enemy front-line stays in between the rest of your team and their carries, assuming the carries will be able to kill you. As long as you have Ulti, you won’t die. actually, even without ulti you might not die. You might not necessarily kill an enemy carry but you should be able to do enough damage to them that they’d be at a high risk of dying if a fight immediately broke out, essentially taking them out of the fight. If you kill one or multiple carries, you just won the fight.

*Some of the enemy front-line goes to help deal with you, while some is left to defend from the rest of your team. This could be the best move or the worst move your enemy team could make. it comes down to execution. If the front-liner coming to deal with you doesn’t succeed in killing you or preventing you from taking a carry out of the fight, he just wasted his time. Regardless, the enemy team are spreading themselves thin and are also opening themselves up to being engaged on by the rest of your team. If the front-liner running back to help deal with you is successful and prevents you from being able to fight or helps to KILL you, you essentially did the same thing as just running in and dying.

That’s the best I can do in terms of explaining how to engage with 72 Transformations. All the little intricacies and nuances that go into it, like positioning, enemy team comp, allied team comp, etc. will come with experience. One thing to keep in mind though is that Wukong is best as an off-tank, rather than the main tank of the team, so engaging usually won’t solely be your responsibility.

That’s my guide. I don’t know how well-received it will be, but I hope it was at the very least helpful to some new players. I hope you guys enjoyed it! If you have any questions, critiques or just wanna discuss Wukong, go nuts! This thread isn’t just a guide, it’s a discussion thread. Discuss!