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16 Votes

Ultimate Monkey King (Sun Wukong) Guide

September 3, 2018 by Vindicator_Morty
Comments: 5    |    Views: 183150    |   


Build 1
Build 2

Core (Carry)

DotA2 Hero: Monkey King




Hero Skills

Boundless Strike

2 8 9 10

Tree Dance

4 13 14 16

Jingu Mastery

1 3 5 7

Wukong's Command

6 12 18

Talents

11 15

Hero Talents

+350 Cast Range and Additional Wukong's Command Ring
25
-1 Jingu Mastery Required Hits
-7s Boundless Strike Cooldown
20
0 Cooldown Primal Spring
+110 Jingu Mastery Damage
15
+450 Tree Dance Cast Range
+0.3s Boundless Strike Stun
10
+75 Primal Spring Max Damage


Ultimate Monkey King (Sun Wukong) Guide

Vindicator_Morty
September 3, 2018


Introduction

Spoiler: Click to view

Lore

Spoiler: Click to view

Pros & Cons

PROS + Good roaming (and gank setup)
+ Very strong 1v1 potential
+ Very versatile carry
CONS - Your escape isn't reliable
- Ultimate is hard to land (especially agains teams expecting it)
- Can be seen on trees with flying vision.

Tip: Tree Dance is disabled for 3 seconds (similar to Blink Dagger) after taking damage.

Roles

Carry

Carry heroes rely on farming gold and buying items allowing them to become threats in the mid/late game and carry their team to victory. They deal significant amount of damage either with abilities or auto-attacks.
Initiator

Initiators are heroes who can safely and advantageously start a team fight. These heroes typically have strong area of effect damage or disable or some ability to affect the positioning of the enemy team. Late in the game, this role becomes very crucial, as an effective initiation can win a teamfight, and a poor one can lose it.
Disabler

Heroes tagged as Disabler generally have abilities which are more focused to reliable crowd control, whether by single target or by area.
Escape

Escape heroes are heroes equipped with one or more escape mechanisms which allow them (or sometimes their allies) to avoid damage and abilities while retreating or repositioning themselves during a teamfight or gank. Escape heroes are particularly suited to soloing the "suicide lane" or short lane, as they can turn situations where death is inevitable into a temporary delay in farm.

Abilities

Amazing nuke and disable either when ganking other lanes or trying to finish off a fleeing enemy. It also works with Jingu Mastery (either adding a stack or applying extra damage).
Great movement ability allowing you to jump on trees and gain vision (800 during day and 400 during night time). It's a great ganking tool because you can be seen only with flying vision.
When you see an enemy you want to initiate on, use your Primal Spring near them. Try to use it to block their escape path. Slow depends on the length of the channel.
Great ability for 1v1. After getting the charges (after 4 hits) the charges remain until you use them (aren't on cooldown) so you can save them for jungling or ganking. (Boudless Strike works with Jingu Mastery)
Goofy ability that transforms you into a neutral object (depending on where you are). Enemies can still attack you.
Cast 14 soldiers in an area around Monkey King. Leaving that are ends the ultimate, so your (and your team's) job is to keep the enemies inside, Try to save Boundless Strike for disabling enemies caught in Wukong's Command. Summoned soldiers apply certain on-hit effects ( Mana Burn) but doesn't work with Jingu Mastery and additional damage from Duel.

Fun fact: Using Mischief in the Roshan's pit transforms you into Aegis of the Immortal. When Roshan respawns for the 3rd time it can also transform you into Cheese even though it drops after Roshan's 2nd death.

Talents

10
+300 Tree Dance vision AOE
vs
+20 attack speed

Attack Speed scales very well with Jingu Mastery as well as speeding-up your farming. If you want evasion you can later pick Butterfly.
15
+275 Health
vs
+75 Jingu Mastery Damage

Additional damage scales with Boundless Strike and heal from the passive itself.
20
+50% Boundless Strikedamage
vs
+400 Primal Spiring damage

Increased critical damage from Boundless Strike provides a very strong nuke.
25
+100 Armor Wukong's Command
vs

Increased range procides huge zoning tool that can be devastating in team fights. It can also be used to force enemies away from tower your team is sieging.

Counters

GOOD AGAINST:


Low mobility, lack of hard disables.
Low mobility, lack of hard disables.
Low mobility, easy to gank in the jungle.
Death Ward channel can be disrupted with Boundless Strike.
Requiem of Souls channel can be disrupted with Boundless Strike.

BAD AGAINST:
Rocket Flare can reveal Mischief and Tree Dance. Hookshotcan hit Monkey Kingwhile on trees.
Firefly gives Batrider flying vision and destroys nearby trees. Flaming Lasso and Flamebreak can put Monkey King out of his ultimate.
Flying axes can destroy trees in an area. call of the wild:hawk can scout Monkey King while on trees.
Timbersaw has three abilities that can destroy trees (that [[monkey king relies on). Can use Timber Chain to escape Wukong's Command.

Items

Starting Items


Provides early lane sustain with four charges (you have to use it on a tree or ward). Tangos can be shared with allies (use Tango and click on an ally you want to share it with).
Active consumes Healing Salve and restores 400 HP over 8 seconds (50 health/second)
They can later build into Ring of Aquila. Another alternative is a Quelling Blade if you struggle with last hitting.
Two Iron Branches provide you with additional stats and can be used for the Magic Wand later.

Tip: Iron Branch has an active that plants a tree. Consuming the tree with Tango provides additional duration for health regen.

Early Game

Provides you with active that restores your health and mana.
Provides damage and agility along with aura mana regen and armor.
Good Boots of Speed upgrade for Monkey King because of his scaling with right-click damage ( Jingu Mastery) and their active that provides a speed boost allowing you to chase fleeing enemies.

Tip: Players sometimes overlook active items in your inventory such as Magic Wand or Faerie Fire that might allow you to heal for just enought to kill them instead of dying.

Core Items

Allows you to double-strike enemies that proc your passive Jingu Mastery 2 times and also slows them.
Armor Penetration scales with the ultimate, Q ( Boundless Strike) and Passive ( Jingu Mastery) allowing you to nuke enemies before they get durability items.
Damage and Attack Speed are both very welcome attributes on Wukong. (With changes to Wukong's Command in 7.06 this item is a bit more situational since it now gives armor instead of damage, making you more durable).

Tip: Activating Shadow Blade right after Wukong's Command allows you to get the full duration if the enemy team has no detection (which is pretty common in lower elo games).

Luxury Items

They make a logical upgrade from Phase Boots especially if you require additional mobility across the map.
Gives even more survivability with armor, aura armor reduction and attack speed that scales with your passive ( Jingu Mastery).
Upgrade from Shadow Blade. With more stats provides you with break(disable passive abilities such as Phantom Assassin's evasion or Bristleback's Quill Spray) and halves their attack damage for 5 seconds.
Gives A LOT of stats. Also provides passive slow on your auto-attacks allowing you to chase your enemies more easiliy.
Evasion can be great if you are the only one with it, but it doesn't scale as well since they changed his level 10 passive from armor to evasion.

Tip: Butterfly provides an active that boosts your movementy speed. However you need to be careful when using it because you lose evasion while the movement boost is active.

Situational Items

Good item if you can get it early. Sacrifices your early stats for more gold and experience.
Good overall item. Mana Burn works with soldiers from Wukong's Command. Active allows to chase fleeing enemies.
Good survivability item, especially against enemies with lots of targeted spells.
This item should be picked if you have troubles staying in your ultimate or can't reliably escape enemy initiation.
Good item for disabling enemy threaths. Bash no longer works with Wukong's Command.


Tip: With its price of 2150, Hand of Midas has to be used eleven times (11 * 200 = 2200) to pay for itself. With the active cooldown of 100 seconds, that takes 18 minutes and 20 seconds if you always use it right when it comes off cooldown.

Summary

All in all Monkey King can be a very fun hero to play, and doesn't require a ton of practice, to be good with him (unlinke heroes like Invoker or Meepo). It excels during early and mid game but you need to be careful because every mistake can be easiliy punished (if the enemies destroy the tree you are on, you get stunned for 4 seconds giving them enough time to burst you down).

Hopefully this guide helps you understand the hero and his play style a bit better and if you have any suggestions/opinions/ideas please comment and I'll try to address the issue when possible.

Cheers <3


This is my first guide on DotA Fire and I must say that I had a blast. I have learned not only a ton of new stuff about formating and writing a guide I have also found out new ways to play the hero ( Monkey King).

Changelog
Spoiler: Click to view

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