Stone Skin (P)

A very mundane passive, but a very strong one. This is what allows Wukong to be so strong when dueling, especially against physical damage characters as the % missing health regeneration and bonus armour make Wukong surprisingly durable and hard to defeat alone. Even against magic damage dealers, the constant regeneration is a big nuisance for the enemy. This gets even stronger when you jump on an enemy and surprise them as you get to stack your passive before they actually start attacking you. The best way to stack your passive quickly with using Warrior Trickster or Cyclone is to use Nimbus Strike on the enemy, auto attack them and then use Crushing Blow to reset your auto attack. This gives you three stacks of your passive with almost no time for the enemy to react.

Crushing Blow (Q)

The bread and butter ability of Wukong. This ability is where your damage comes (excluding your ultimate, Cyclone) and turns you into a complete monster to play against. While it does give you bonus damage on your next auto attack like any other empowered auto attack, it also grants extra range & reduces the target's armour by a % amount. This is honestly a bit overpowered since not only are you insanely durable thanks to Stone Skin, you also deal more damage to the target since all of your damage is physical. If the enemy is smart enough not to duel you in a sustained fight, you still have incredible burst damage if you use the combo mentioned in the passive section. The extra range also makes it impossible for anyone to run away at low health since you can easily catch up with your other abilities and hit them with a Q snipe.

Warrior Trickster (W)

My favourite ability on Wukong, this is an incredibly useful piece of utility and is your main outplay tool. There are multiple different ways to use this spell and all are for different scenarios. You can even switch up how you use it to throw off enemies trying to get a pattern on you, tilting and confusing them. The most common way to use this ability is to either catch up to an enemy, run away from an enemy, or pass over a wall. It's a very quick dash with no cast time so it is a very efficient way to move quickly. The other main use is the invisibility, which is where the actual skill and interesting gameplay is rooted. You can use the invisibility in the middle of a teamfight to reposition to a more favourable angle while distracting enemies with a clone, you can auto attack something and use this ability to close the gap between you and a target while your clone is still attacking what you were attacking previously making it seem like you're still there, etcetera, etcetera. There are many different ways to utilize this ability making it hard for enemies to get a read on you and makes it harder for them to predict your next moves. Most of Wukong's tricks revolve around this ability and it will be discussed further later in the guide.

Nimbus Strike (E)

Wukong's main gap closing ability, Nimbus Strike is was makes this champion so threatening to play against as he can easily get on top of you and start chasing you down. The attack speed you gain from this ability is extremely crucial to the playstyle that Wukong promotes with his passive and Crushing Blow as you can stack Stone Skin faster and reduce the cooldown of Crushing Blow faster since both benefit from more auto attack. The range on this ability is also quite large for a point-and-click gap closer, similar to Diana's Lunar Rush which makes it easy to stick to targets.

Cyclone (R)

You are already incredible strong at dueling and this ability for an ultimate is what makes you a lethal threat in teamfights and guarantees victory in duels. No matter how much health the target has, it will always deal a considerable amount of damage due to dealing a % of the target's max health as physical damage. Combine this with the armour reduction from Crushing Blow and you can deal absurd amount of damage. This ability is also great and disrupting enemies channeling abilities like Jhin's Curtain Call and Vel'Koz's Life Form Disintegration Ray. The cherry on top is not only does your clone from Warrior Trickster replicate this ability when used, it can be re-cast again allowing you to use it twice!

Keystone

Conqueror is by far the one and only keystone to take on Wukong. There is no other keystone that are even remotely viable compared to Conqueror with the exception of Electrocute with a lethality-based build (which is still not as effective as building bruiser).

Primary Runes

	Triumph is a strong rune on Wukong because it restores health on takedowns, letting him survive dives and extended fights while rewarding his aggressive, teamfight-heavy playstyle.
	Legend: Alacrity is good on Wukong because the bonus attack speed helps him weave in more autos between abilities, boosting his damage output and letting him stack Conqueror faster and get resets on his Crushing Blow in extended fights.
	Last Stand is good on Wukong because he often fights at low health after diving into enemies, and the bonus damage helps him finish off targets or turn fights when he's close to dying and when dueling—perfect for his bruiser, all-in style.

Secondary Runes

	Magical Footwear is great on Wukong because it saves gold, gives bonus movement speed, and lets him focus on rushing core items for early skirmishing power. He doesn’t rely on early boots as much as some champs, so the delay is not a big downside.
	Cosmic Insight gives you more frequent Flash engages, Smite fights, and item active usage, which amplifies everything Wukong wants to do — dive, disrupt, and dominate skirmishes.

Alternative Secondary Runes

Bone Plating and Overgrowth is a strong combo on Wukong when you want more durability in trades and teamfights. Bone Plating helps reduce burst damage during early trades or all-ins — especially useful when diving in with your combo — while Overgrowth gives scaling max HP, letting you become tankier as the game progresses. Together, they make Wukong harder to kill in both lane and extended skirmishes, making this setup ideal for bruiser or frontline builds.

Axiom Arcanist and Transcendence turns Wukong into a fast-paced skirmisher with shorter cooldowns, more ult uptime, and stronger resets off kills. It’s a great combo when you're playing aggressively and want to carry teamfights through constant pressure.

• How should you use Wukong's kit?
• Why is Wukong effective at doing what he does compared to other champions?
• What should you NOT be doing as Wukong?

How should you use Wukong's kit?

Wukong's abilities are very straightforward to apply and understand but are incredibly dynamic and have many potentional unique uses.

Stone Skin (P)

His passive, Stone Skin is very simple and simply makes him more durable. There isn't really much to it other than that but it's an extremely crucial part of his kit as it's what allows him to be extra-aggressive and effective against physical damage. Naturally you'd want to stack this very quickly to immediately get the full benefits from what the passive offers, but there is not much else to say or advice to give.

Crushing Blow (Q)

Crushing Blow is also a very simple ability but is both a straight forward ability to use and has some niche aspects about it that you can take advantage of (those are all covered in the Tips, Tricks, & Mechanics section of this guide). You should be using this ability to constantly apply damage to the enemy and going in for extended fights so you can abuse the passive this ability has to essentially just spam it on someone. For basic use, it's quite self explanatory how to use this ability but just remember it's designed to be used in sustained fights against people, not burst damage. While it totally is good for bursting people down, it's much more efficient as full-blown brawls.

Another thing to note is the armour reduction on the target you hit. While this is a more obvious one, an important thing to understand is that this doesn't increase just your physical damage against the target, it reduces their total armour meaning all physical damage is amplified. This is important as you can micro manage who you are using Crushing Blow on to increase the impact your team's physical damage has against the enemy, which is very strong.

Warrior Trickster (W)

Warrior Trickster is not the only ability that has it's uses against thin terrain as this ability allows Wukong to pass directly through it. This ability single handedly makes Wukong go from a threatening engage champion to an extremely mobile and slippery threat.

The invisibility is the other key factor with this ability as it allows you to be very sneaky and confuse enemies with creative and skill-expressive plays.

• The bonus range given by Crushing Blow is actually enough to auto attack over thin sections of terrain. Spots like the Krugs camp, the Blue Sentinel camp, and the Dragon pit are all places on the map with very thin walls that Wukong can utilize the bonus range to attack over. This is actually incredibly useful despite how niche it is since a lot of players flash over walls to get away from you and while you could use Warrior Trickster to pass, if they are low enough to die in one attack you can simply hit them over the wall to finish them off, preserving your resources. Also just a useful trick to poke people over terrain to easily chunk them for 150-400 damage (depends on how strong you are).
  
• You can trick enemies into thinking you've used Warrior Trickster by pressing whatever key is bound to the 'Stop' action. Most champions will gracefully come to a stop with a custom animation to show the champion is actively stopping their movement. Wukong just straight up doesn't have an animation for this so when you stop moving or stop all actions (easily achieved by using the 'Stop' action...) his character model just abruptly cuts to him standing in his idle animation. This is not a bug or missing animation on Wukong, it's actually intentional and by design. The reason that this happens is because when you use Warrior Trickster the clone can't move and wasn't moving to begin with so it will immediately spawn in performing the default idle animation. Essentially, when you use the ability, the enemy can easily see you've used it as you've just stood completely still and reset your animation. Using this knowledge, you can just perform the 'Stop' action and pretend you've used the ability to throw enemies off and trick them into thinking you've ran away, gone over a wall, or used it to reposition in a fight.
  
• Relating to the previous trick above this one, your clone from Warrior Trickster will automatically start auto attacking anything nearby it can hit. You can abuse this mechanic by sitting at a camp or a minion wave and just hitting them normally. Whenever the time is right, you can use Warrior Trickster right after your next attack lands and use the dash towards the enemy. The clone will continue to hit the previous target as if that is you and you are still there allowing you to close the gap between you and your target without them even knowing. This means you can save your Nimbus Strike for when they try to run away or use a mobility tool (like Flash, Arcane Shift, Riftwalk, etc.). Very good trick if you're trying to kill a greedy & slippery target.
  
• While you're in the invisibility from Warrior Trickster, you can really confuse the opponent and trick them into thinking your clone is the real you by having the clone perform an auto reset on the enemy champion. This is done by casting Crushing Blow but not actually hitting anything with it (as hitting something would remove your stealth). This will also give the clone the ability and will reset it's auto attack timer. You can utilize this the same way you'd be resetting your auto attacks normal, except with the clone. The goal is to make the clone seem more like a player and less like a, well, a clone. The overall point is just to weave this trick in with some other ones to confuse opponents and make them uncomfortable facing you.
  
• If you're about to team fight and an enemy frontline is a little too far forward, you can always hit them with a Crushing Blow to poke them. Since the range is so long when you use it, it really isn't punishing to use and has such a short cooldown. The main purpose of this poke is to reduce the champion's armour so your ranged physical damage dealers can punish them heavily for over extending. This can easily lead to picks as the armour reduction will most likely not be taken into consideration by the opponent and won't respect the extra damage they'll receive.