I recently saw a thread talking about how Wukong can't build tank. This is not true, but it's obviously not the ideal way to play Wukong. First thing I want to say, Wukong's passive makes him semi-tanky. In teamfights, this allows him to get a tiny beefy, (the more enemies around him, the more armor/mr he gets.) This is why he seems like he is a bruiser when you play against him, and it might tempt you to go bruiser. However, Wukong has amazing AD ratios, and honestly should be built with full AD. So, Tank VS Assassin. What makes a tank good? Tanks invest all of their money into... tank. Who would have thought? So, just like supports, they want to do a lot without much money. This seperates tanks into two. Damage tanks and CC tanks. Damage tanks are champions such as Tahm Kench or Mundo. These champions distract and disrupt through damage. If you try to ignore these champions, they will destroy your carries. They function off either tank-stat scaling abilities (Tahm Kench or Malphite) or percent damage abilities (Mundo, Ekko, Fizz). If you scale with tank, you can build tank, and still get damage, so you get the best of both worlds. Percent scaling abilities deal damage depending on their percent health, so even if you have no aggressive stats, you will eventually kill them. Also, having strong base damages is helpful, but late game won't mean anything. CC Tanks provide... CC. CC does not scale with items except for CDR, which you can get through your tank items. Even if you are full tank, you will still have the same impact on the fight, because your disruptiveness comes CC. Unlike damage tanks, you don't distract by being dangerous, you distract by annoying the crap out of everyone on their team with CC. Nautilus is a good example. He has snares on every auto, he has a hook, he has infinite slows, and an AOE knockup/stun. He provides so much peel. Other champions, such as Amumu, use their CC for engage. A lot of tanks do both CC and damage, although some specialize in one over another. So, which does Wukong fit in? First, lets's look at damage tanks. Wukong has no percent damage abilities, nor tank-stat abilities. He just... isn't good for doing damage without items. His AD scalings are honestly insane, and it's kind of a waste. For CC tanks, he has a huge knockup... I guess? I mean, honestly, it's just a shorter ranged malphite ult, if you are going to play him like that. Malphite does almost everything better than Wukong as a tank. There is only one time to play Wukong as a tank, and that is with 4 squishes. Even if you have 4 squishes, why did you choose Wukong? I know it's not really good comparision, but Malphite does most of Wukong's jobs as a tank. Assassin What does a champion need to do for an assassin? An Assassin does a lot of damage, quickly. However, not only that, but they have an escape (most of the time). A few examples: Zed honestly can just pop people. He does his full combo very fast, and he can go back to his shadows as his escape. Leblanc also does her combo super fast, and has her W as an escape. (2nd activation) Heck, even katarina can use her E to escape after a kill. However, Rengar and Talon... they have no escapes. They both blow people up super fast.. but they have no escapes. This honestly just sucks for them, because they can't be a CC tank or a damage tank, so the best way to play them is as an Assassin. Riot balanced their damage and such to make them not unplayable, but not having an escape is one of the huge problems of these champions. Xin Zhao also suffers from this. Now, what about Wukong? Wukong has an escape, his W. Why would this ability not work on tanks? Because it basically provides flat time. Wukong goes invisible for 3 seconds. This increases his time alive by 3 seconds. If he would only survive for 6 seconds as an assassin, this is a 50% increase in his lifetime. However, if he survives for 20 seconds as a tank, he only survives for 15% more. This is one of the main reasons why he works as a good Assassin. Not only that, but this is also used as an engage from stealth. It's kind of bad because you have no escape, so that is a problem. Wukong's combo is also super fast. E -> Auto -> Q -> R is a rather fast combo, and if it doesn't kill them, his ultimate will last for 4 seconds with a 1.1% scaling PER SECOND. If he somehow can't kill them with a 4.4% AD scaling, that is a problem. Wukong has more traits as an Assassin over a tank. He can be built tank, but it's suboptimal. I like to think of him like Yasuo. First of all, Tank Yasuo was strong because how forgiving it was. You dealt a lot less damage, but you could survive much longer if you make a mistake. Same thing with Wukong. However, Yasuo could do more with tank items than Wukong. Also, both Wukong and Yasuo can DPS. They both just secure picks when catching people out, but they don't dive in unless they know they can do damage. This is why Wukong builds full AD, even if he is behind. Unlike Zed, there it isn't a "Can I kill him" question, it is "How slow will I kill him". Your ult will kill most with your full combo, it will just take longer. Zed basically becomes useless if he can't kill the carry. However, Wukong's job is less about just killing the carry, and more on adding DPS to the team, kinda. This post has kinda been a ramble, but TL;DR, build Wukong full AD to make use of his amazing scalings. Also, his build is something like GB -> Cleaver and then situational. Maw is good against AP, Deadman's plate 4/5 item is good because it provides good movement speed for engaging/running. GA is pretty strong too. Last thing: SWIFITES IS a 100% MUST. A monkey without his movement speed is a dead monkey. You need it to keep up with champions. Ok, maybe not 100%, but it is the default. If you only have 900 gold, GET THIS. EDIT: So some guy told me my build was crap. And he's not wrong. /shrug. Here's his thing. Note: Mine is taken off champion.gg with official statistics. Honestly, I think that one is safer, but here is another balls to the wall full damage build. terrible build... you mention assassin then go for early cleaver/maw/ga? diamond wukong here... my build goes hydra > swifty boots > youmuus > mortal reminder > black cleaver > duskblade/GA/maw you wont get anywhere without hydra as wukong trust me..