The Return to Monke frame, nr.1 choice for people who don’t want to play the game while playing the game - Wukong!
Release date: 2015-11-25
Passive: Avoid fatal damage up to 3 times per mission while getting a buff.
Celestial Twin - Shedding part of himself, Wukong creates a twin to fight by his side. Attack at range and the twin will melee, pull a blade and the twin will lay down covering fire. Use again to command the twin to attack a target with increased damage.
Cloud Walker - Evaporate into a cloud of mist and float through the battlefield, dazing any enemy encountered, while healing Wukong and his twin.
Defy - Wukong and his twin become invulnerable and defy enemies to attack. All damage is captured, stored, and dealt back in a single furious strike of Wukong’s staff. Bonus Armor is then granted relative to the damage captured.
Primal Fury - Summon the Iron Staff and unleash fury.
Acquisition: Blueprints can be researched from the Tenno Lab in the dojo.
I remember when Wukong used to be the extremely niche “invincible” frame with an expandable stick, what a glow-up Pablo gave him! I played him a bunch after that, but got bored of monkeying around eventually and haven’t really touched him much since the ammo Celestial Twin nerf. He is still by far the best Spy frame, ignore all lasers and cameras while being extremely fast. I always bring him out if the weekly Archon Hunt has a Spy in it (subsume Perspicacity to not have to deal with the annoying Narmer hacks). It is an absolute shame the state his Iron Staff is in though, and it just got worse with the addition of melee arcanes and Tennokai. DE really needs to take a look at the state of Exalted weapons, there are like 2 frames with them that are doing OK while all the others are struggling.
He’s my impact progenitor frame of choice for making use of Primary Exhilirate and Internal Bleeding. Don’t really use him for much else at the point in the game I’m at.
The clone is useful, but I just roll with the railjack minion when I actually need the help.
The fartcloud is good. I have void dash for flying through the air though.
The counter is alright, though largely unnecessary with adaptation and arcane guardian.
The stick isn’t a slashing weapon, don’t want it
He’s a great pickup for a new player who just joined a clan, though. Real easy to make and covers a lot of bases a newbie might be lacking in.
Wukong kind of got hit kind of hard by that ammo nerf. The clone tends to burn through ammo fairly aggressively, and his abilities aren’t really focused towards killing enemies.
He’s still a good choice for missions like Spy and Capture, and his abilities offer a lot more survivability compared to other frames.
If you want utility from his clone, give him a weapon with Radiation/Cold for some minor CC, or something that’s good at applying multiple statuses for CO mods.
Cloud Walker is great for avoiding enemies and covering large gaps like the ones on the Gas City tileset.
Defy greatly increases Wukong’s armor, it’s kind of disappointing that this ability is still nerfed from the Helminth, and would have been a great alternative to requiring shield gating for endgame content. Obviously armor only goes so far, but for non endurance missions the survivability from this ability would have been more than enough.
Iron Staff is pretty disappointing, it seems it’s only use would be to get one of the buffs that require you to have a channelled ability active.
