Wukong Prime was the warframe that kept me busy for most of last month, earning relics and then cracking them open painstakingly, only to find the wrong parts and begin all over again.
One has the option to skip most of the grind by paying a semi-exorbitant sum of real money – I did that for my first love Rhino Prime and have never regretted it; I was at a point in the game where I needed a good tanky awesome-looking frame to push my progress further.
In this case, I didn’t need Wukong Prime, but I thought he looked really cool and wanted him pretty badly. Going the relic route basically meant an excuse for gameplay… though bad luck ended up really extending the length of that gameplay this time around.
Worth it. Playing around with the frame after earning the parts over said month, spending 12 hours building the parts, and then waiting another 3 days for the parts to be assembled into the warframe was immensely rewarding.
The frame’s abilities were apparently reworked fairly recently and the results are something I really dig as a soloist.
Ability 1 creates a celestial twin – basically a computer-controlled version of your warframe, presumably using the specter/pet AI. It uses melee if you pull out your ranged weapon to shoot something, and switches to range if you go melee.
Fortunately, the pet AI in Warframe is good enough to do a decent amount of damage, especially when it uses my Ignis Wraith flamethrower. It is childishly delightful to just watch your very own computer-controlled ally just clear all the enemies for you, while you stand around, swinging your melee weapon around in the air while admiring yourself.
Once you tire of that, ability 2 is Cloud Walker. He disappears into a cloud, going invulnerable (temporary tankiness, awesome!) and while in the cloud, you gain a massive speed boost and flight abilities, so you can literally pilot yourself up floors and across gaps without needing anything so crass as a bullet jump or a double jump like all those other ground-dwelling warframes.
In case that wasn’t enough, Cloud Walker also restores your health.
Oh, and it stuns any enemies you waft pass.
Is there anything it can’t do?!
I haven’t found the limits yet. I even managed a Maroo’s Ayatan sculpture mission with it, something I previously had to resort to Titania’s Razorwing flight mode. Cloud Walker is more brief, lasting only seconds, but I kinda like the active feel and the design implication that a little bit of skill in timing is needed to do cool things with it.
Ability 3 is Defy. Another sort of invulnerable skill which absorbs damage enemies do to you briefly, then reflects it back in a giant staff swipe of multiplied AoE damage. Oh, and he gains a brief armor bonus based on how much damage was absorbed, capped at 1500 armor.
I like it. It brings shades of Rhino or GW2 guardian blocks to mind, in that there is tankiness to be had, but it should be timed well, or at least used actively, when you anticipate huge bursts of incoming damage.
Ability 4 is the classic Iron Staff the Monkey King is always seen with. Like Excalibur, he can pull out an Exalted melee weapon and then go to town on enemies.
Honestly, I haven’t even tried out ability 4 while ranking up Wukong Prime. I just couldn’t be bothered to slot it with mods yet.
I had a Zaw, Warframe’s custom modular melee weapon earnable from the Plains of Eidolon, and it happened to be an already modded two-handed bladed staff I’m pretty fond of. So that’s my melee weapon for the time being.
I presume with proper slotting Iron Staff might be pretty good, or more ideally, pretty darned awesome, or less ideally, just only okay. Whatever. I’m good with Celestial Twin and Cloud Walker already.
It’s odd. I never really was attracted to the persistent Monkey King-alikes that “mysteriously” get inserted into various games (aka thinly veiled attempt to appeal to the China market – see Who is Sun Wukong and Why is He in Every MOBA?) despite being Asian and yes, growing up with Journey to the West as one of my favorite book series/mythological stories.
But something about Warframe’s Wukong Prime – and it has to be the Prime look – really does it for me.
Superhero musculature, robot monkey, and all ninja – yep, checks all the boxes except zombie and pirate.
Definitely one of my favorite warframes, just a hair shy behind Nidus and Rhino Prime.
Why I Game 