Back
Safe
Mid
Off
More
Lore & Bio
Playstyle
Monkey King is a trickster hero who jumps from treetop to treetop, scouting out his opponents from above, waiting for the opportunity to crash down on them with Primal Spring. With his magic extending staff, he smashes distant foes with Boundless Strikes, each blow charging his weapon through Jingu Mastery. Prone to Mischief, the Monkey King disguises himself as trees and everyday objects, allowing him to ambush enemies, or deceive them for a quick getaway.
Props
- Tricky and elusive.
- Very mobile.
- Long melee attack range.
- High damage and teamfight control with items.
Cons
- Item dependent.
- Slow farmer.
- Highly dependent on trees.
- Suffers long stun if he falls from a tree.
- Wukong's Command relies on Black King Bar to sustain.
Carry
Though Monkey King is typically played as a support and ganker, it is ideal to transition into a core position as he is severely hindered by lack of farm. Therefore players often grab a
Hand of Midas as soon possible and briefly farm whenever it is off cooldown in between fights. Playing Monkey King as a carry from the start is not recommended as he is an extremely slow farmer and requires an extraordinarily good head start above the enemy team to keep up, with mediocre attack speed for an agility hero, only one true AoE ability on relatively long cooldown and fairly high mana demand, and weak damage without his passive which only works on heroes. However with enough items, Monkey King can become a force to be reckoned with into the late game, as he can be highly elusive and can clear entire creep waves with one Boundless Strike.
Ganker/Roamer
Monkey King's ability to roam is top tier. Tree Dance allows him to jump tree to tree with low cooldown and no mana cost. He can quickly go from lane to lane without enemies knowing, as without high ground or flying vision, they cannot see him while he is on a tree. The mobility and elusiveness from Tree Dance also allows him to place wards deep in enemy territory with little effort. When ganking, an ally with stun or slow will be of great help as it can allow him to fully channel Primal Spring. In the early game, an
Orb of Venom is commonly bought to help slow a target. Boundless Strike can be used to stun and nuke the fleeing target or other enemies attempting to counter the gank.
Attribute & Stats
Abilities & Talents
Notes
Talents are fully copied by the Wukong's Command clones, but none of the current talents have an effect, as they cannot use active abilities and their attack speed is fixed.
Skills building guide
- Unlike most melee heroes, Monkey King has an attack range of 300, allowing him to attack other melee opponents without fear of retaliation.
- Take advantage of Monkey King's ability to hop from tree to tree to retreat into the treeline around the edges of the map whenever he is threatened.
- Take advantage of Boundless Strike's stun duration to land Primal Spring.
- Due to Wukong's Command being unaffected by attack speed and Boundless Strike relying solely on raw damage values, players would have go for raw damage and agility in order to maximize these abilities. However, don’t skip attack speed completely, as it helps with Jingu Mastery and his basic attacks.
Abilities
Boundless Strike
- Boundless Strike's damage depends entirely on Monkey King's basic damage, so building up high damage and agility items will tremendously increase its damage output.
- Boundless Strike's critical multiplier is not significant until later in the game, when Monkey King has more damage.
- Boundless Strike's damage output is augmented by the damage bonus from Jingu Mastery. Use Boundless Strike when Jingu Mastery stacks are available to deal high damage in the early game.
- Boundless Strike is affected by Jingu Mastery and will apply a counter stack and expend a charge as if it was performed by a basic attack.
- Each hero caught by its reach will have a counter stack applied onto them.
- Boundless Strike will always expend a single charge, regardless of how many enemies are hit or if it misses entirely. Try to maximise the potential of each charge by hitting clumps of opponents at once.
- Jingu Mastery's lifesteal applies to all targets struck with Boundless Strike, a great way to sustain when used against multiple units like creep waves and heroes.
- Boundless Strike will only trigger off of one hero's counter if the resulting strike hits multiple heroes with a counter stack of 3.
- For example, Boundless Strike should be saved to interrupt Pugna after he starts channeling Life Drain.
Tree Dance
- Tree Dance has no mana cost as well as a very low cooldown. Use this ability to bypass cliffs and traverse across the map quickly.
- While perched upon a tree, the Move command is linked to the Tree Dance ability, and functions exactly as Tree Dance does.
- Tree Dance is placed on cooldown whenever Monkey King takes player-based damage, similar to the mechanics of Blink Dagger, making it near impossible to use as an escape mechanism once Monkey King is engaged in combat.
- Use Primal Spring to dislodge yourself from a tree if you are being attacked by an opponent.
- Monkey King is disarmed while perched, but he can still use items and his abilities without restriction.
- Boundless Strike and Mischief can be used while on a tree without causing Monkey King to jump off.
- Items like Force Staff, Blink Dagger, and Eul's Scepter of Divinity will force Monkey King to descend from his tree.
- Take the opportunity to place Observer Wards in unorthodox and hard-to-reach places that can't normally be accessible by other heroes.
- While perched in a tree, activating Tree Dance again will highlight nearby trees that are within range of being perched from your current tree with a soft aura.