Maybe Wukong is a little too strong…

With every anniversary event in Warframe, we are also given a peak into player stats. After all, it’s interesting to see which frames are popular and which ones aren’t. However, for the last couple of years, we’ve had the same Warframe at the top, quite a bit higher than expected. The frame in question is Wukong Prime, which has managed to beat all three starters when it comes to most-used Warframes.

But why though, why is Wukong Prime so popular?

Plenty of everything.

Wukong has got a little bit of everything. He has a damage-dealing twin that uses our weapons; he can escape pretty much everything by turning into a cloud and flying away. And, finally, Wukong is rather tanky. Which is unusual because normally tanky frames aren’t damage dealers as well. Really though, it’s Celestial Twin that does a huge amount of work. Summoning the Celestial Twin is easy to do, you can make it focus on specific enemies. But more importantly, Celestial Twin uses our own, modded weapons. Pass Wukong’s Twin your Kuva Bramma and its damage remains sky high. This is far better than normal Warframe Specters, which don’t have properly modded weapons with things like Riven Mods on them.

And then there’s his passive. Wukong gets three free revives as a passive. You don’t even really need to work for them, the same way Inaros and our Operators can. You just magically come back to life with a free buff.

The only thing Wukong lacks is crowd control. But he doesn’t need it. Not when everything else is dead.

As for why people don’t use normal Wukong as much? Well, Wukong Prime’s parts are scattered in so many relics that it’s pretty easy to get all its components. Normal Wukong on the other hand requires joining a clan, getting a key and buying the components from the Tenno lab. It’s definitely not difficult, but Wukong Prime via relics requires just as much work, while also being a prime.

Brainless gameplay

What makes Wukong so popular though is that it’s a stupidly easy Warframe to use. All you have to do is summon your Celestial Twin, give it a nice, explosive weapon and watch as everything around you explodes. In the mean time, you can clear things up with your melee weapon, or maybe get yourself some extra armour, if everything isn’t quite dying easily. It’s stupidly easy to do well as Wukong because Celestial Twin can play the game for you.

There’s something else going on here too. Wukong’s Iron Staff is an exalted weapon, but it’s not a particularly good one. However, that makes Wukong a perfect candidate for the Helminth system. Replacing the exalted staff with things like Sevagoth’s Gloom or Rhino’s Roar make Wukong an even better Warframe.

Add on top of that your invulnerable crowd and armour that properly stacks, you end up with a Warframe that does everything.

How do you change this?

How DO we change this? Because we really don’t want to hit Wukong too hard. And, heck, not all of his skills are good. Wukong’s exalted weapon is the worst ability in his kit, but does that mean it needs buffing? Maybe we just need a few number tweaks here and there.

And then you have the final question: Should we change Wukong? After all, there will always be a Warframe that is used more than any other Warframe. It’s better that an easily accessible Warframe is strong, so people of all types can obtain the Monkey King with ease. All that being said, maybe we should just leave Wukong alone, and look at buffing other Warframes instead. After all, they need it more.