World of Warships: Tier VIII Pan-Asian Cruiser Wukong Review

The Wukong, named after the Monkey-king, mythological character from the Chinese culture, is basically a Charles Martel that was stripped from all of her nice features (The Engine Boost and the Reload Booster) and was given… questionable gimmicks such as a Torpedo Reload Booster.

I still don’t get how a French heavy cruiser can become a Pan-Asian premium but I think that I’m just thinking too much about it.

Tier VIII Pan-Asian Premium Cruiser Wukong: Charles Martel’s bad yet aesthetic Chinese counterfeit

Her permanent camouflage gives the standard Tier VIII permanent camouflage bonuses:

While the ship is basically useless, she sure is good looking, I have to give that to her.

The Good and the Bad

The Good

• Good Firing Range
• Strong HE and hard-hitting AP
• Fast turret traverse
• Good torpedo firing angles
• Long-range torpedoes
• Spaced armor
• Tight turning radius
• Torpedo Reload Booster (That’s good-ish even though the ship only has 3 torpedoes per side and the moment you lose a launcher, the consumable loses 50% of its value)

The Bad

• Low Health Pool for a Tier VIII heavy cruiser
• Relatively slow ship
• Fragile Steering Gears
• No Hydroacoustic Search
• Terrible long-range anti-air

My opinion

The Wukong is simply a worse Charles Martel that loses everything that made the ship unique and fun to play for useless gimmicks that don’t fit the ship at all.

Don’t get me wrong, the ship is decent and even good, buuuuut… why would you ever pay for that exactly?

Health pool

The health pool is low for a heavy cruiser with only 38 000 HP. Without counting the Repair Parties that some others have, this is among the lowest base health pools. All the others have a health pool that goes over 40 000 with the exception of Charles Martel that has the same HP and the Wichita that has the hull of a light cruiser.

Main battery

ConsumablesMain Battery

Slot 1	Slot 2	Slot 3	Slot 4
Damage Control Party I Work time: 5 s Cooldown: 90 s	Defensive AA Fire I Number of charges: 2 Work time: 40 s Cooldown: 120 s Boost: +50% damage of the continuous DPS +300 % damage of flak clouds	Spotting Aircraft I Number of charges: 3 Work time: 100 s Cooldown: 360 s Bonus: +20% maximum firing range	Torpedo Reload Booster I Number of charges: 2 Work time: 1 s Cooldown: 360 s Torpedo reload time: 8 s
Damage Control Party II Work time: 5 s Cooldown: 60 s	Defensive AA Fire II Number of charges: 3 Work time: 40 s Cooldown: 80 s Boost: +50% damage of the continuous DPS +300 % damage of flak clouds	Spotting Aircraft II Number of charges: 4 Work time: 100 s Cooldown: 240 s Bonus: +20% maximum firing range	Torpedo Reload Booster II Number of charges: 3 Work time: 1 s Cooldown: 240 s Torpedo reload time: 8 s

3 x 3 203 mm/55 Mle 1934
Maximum Firing Range	17.580 km
Reloading Time	10.5 s
180 Degree Turn Time	25.7 s
Optimal firing angles at the front	34°
Optimal firing angles at the rear	34°
Sigma	2.00 sigma
Maximum Dispersion	154 m
Shells
Type of Projectile	HE – 203 mm HE OEA Mle 1927
Alpha Damage	2 800 HP
Damage	1 230 HP
Penetration capacity	33 mm
Explosion size	0.86
Fire chance	15 %
Projectile Speed	876 m/s
Air Drag	0.33
Projectile Mass	123.8
Type of Projectile	AP – 203 mm AP OPf Mle 1936
Alpha Damage	4 900 HP
Chance to Cause Fire	-0.5 %
Projectile Speed	845 m/s
Air Drag	0.33
Projectile Mass	134
Projectile Krupp	2 434
Projectile Detonator	0.033 s
Detonator threshold	34 mm

The guns of the Wukong are overall doing a fine job. The ballistic perfectly allows you to hit reliably no matter the range, the HE is strong and the AP packs a very nice punch. As a roaming/damage dealing focused cruiser, the ship pretty much does what you expect her to do. Since she doesn’t have railguns either, she can exploit islands to shoot over them if needed.

Sadly, even though the reload is shorter than the Charles Martel, the simple fact that compared to her, she doesn’t have the Main Battery Reload Booster is enough to make her obsolete and not worth buying unless you really want a Pan-Asian heavy cruiser.

Secondary battery

Secondaries

5 x 2 100 mm/45 Mle 1931
Maximum Firing Range	5.0 km
Reloading Time	4.0 s
Sigma	1.00 sigma
Shells
Type of Projectile	HE – 100 mm HE OEA Mle 1928
Alpha Damage	1 400 HP
Damage	310 HP
HE penetration	16 mm
Explosion Size	0.26
Chance to Cause Fire	6 %
Projectile Speed	780 m/s
Air Drag	0.314
Projectile Mass	13.5

Wukong’s secondaries… exist. That’s pretty much all you can say about them. There are only 5 of them, they are 100 mm guns and even for anti-air purpose, they are laughably bad.

Torpedo armament

The Wukong received a similar treatment to Irian. In both cases, their torpedoes were replaced by Pan-Asian long-range torpedoes. For Irian, it kinda works because she has Yue Yang torpedoes with 13.5 km range and also 5 per side.
For Wukong… 12 km range and only 3 per side. These torps can somewhat be useful if you are kiting an enemy ship and the guy is not smart enough to change course but except that… even for torpedo rushing, it’s not great because, with 3 torpedoes, you might get a cruiser kill and even then, depends on how healthy the said cruiser is.

You do have the Torpedo Reload Booster but… that thing’s usefulness is anecdotic at best on this ship.

The anti-air armament

The anti-air of the Wukong is decent but that’s about it. Her long-range is laughably bad with low DPS and also only 2 flak clouds generated. As for the mid and short-range, the DPS is okay but nothing to write stories about.

The fact that you are stuck with Defensive AA will somewhat help though (because yes, you cannot change her consumables and cannot use Hydroacoustic Search).

Maneuverability and Concealment

Wukong’s maneuverability is decent but since you are losing the Engine Boost from Charles Martel, speed-wise, there are quite a few cruisers outrunning her. The base speed is only 32.5 kts and the base Rudder Shift time is close from 10 s. It, of course, doesn’t mean that you cannot dodge anything but when it comes to dodging shells, thanks to her speed, Charles Martel is just straight up superior.

The concealment is decent and will give you some breathing space when needed. With a full concealment build and camouflage, you reach a surface spotting range of 10.74 km and an air spotting range of 5.8 km.

The armor

Since the Wukong is initially a French cruiser, she has the notorious spaced armor scheme protecting her citadel. The only exception is below the turrets where the citadel is fully exposed. The main belt is 100 mm thick and for the softer parts, the bow, stern, deck and upper belt are 25 mm thick.
The superstructure is the classic 16 mm plating.

For internal protection, the citadel’s side plating behind the spaced armor is 40 mm thick. In action, it proved to be quite trollish and if you already played or shot at a Charles Martel, you know that overpenetrations happen quite often.

However, be careful when exposing the bow or the stern because the flat 100 mm citadel athwartship is quite easy to hit for battleships so staying nose-in to them can be quite risky.

For the turrets, the face is 140 mm thick and slightly sloped, the sides and roof are 100 mm thick and the back is 120 mm thick. Overall, for a cruiser, these turrets are decently protected.

Side note: I seriously hate the new color scheme of the armor viewer…

The consumables

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Conclusion

To sum it up, the Wukong is a decent roaming cruiser with strong firepower and torpedoes that can… somewhat be useful. Now, unless you are something like a collector or somehow believe hard that there will be a Pan-Asian cruiser line, the ship is just not worth buying as Charles Martel is literally a better ship in almost every way

Recommended build

During the testing of the Wukong, I used the following captain build and upgrades:

Captain build:

• Priority Target: Pretty much a must-have on cruisers, very useful to know how many enemies are shooting at you and from where enemy shells might come from.
  Remember that it’s also useful to know when you are getting torpedoed because when a ship that already has a lock on you switches to torpedoes, the lock will not be counted on the Priority Target.
• Preventive Maintenance: Quite useful on French cruisers until Henri IV and by such on Wukong since they all have fragile steering gears.
• Expert Loader: A nice perk to have in case an enemy cruiser suddenly decides to give you broadside.
• Expert Marksman: This one is more of an “I don’t have anything else worth picking” since the turrets on Wukong already turn decently fast. 23.4 s of turret rotation time is quite nice though.
• Adrenaline Rush: Always a great perk for the faster reload, especially in the late game when you will already be fairly chunked logically.
• Last Stand: As I was saying earlier, it is a Charles Martel so her steering gears are quite fragile. You want to be able to keep maneuvering.
• Demolition Expert: At this tier, the natural fire resistance of ships is still pretty low so getting some extra fire chance on a damage-dealing focused cruiser is always nice.
• Torpedo Armament Expertise: These are literally the last 3 points that I decided to throw on that perk as nothing else was really worth taking. Superintendent is really not useful with her consumables set and Basics of Survivability is rarely useful on a standard cruiser since you have a Damage Control Party with a relatively fast cooldown.
• Concealment Expert: Being harder to detect, especially in a ship that doesn’t have the best armor is always great.

Upgrades:

• Main Armament Modification 1: You want to keep your armaments working.
• Steering Gears Modification 1: It’s a French cruiser that isn’t Henri IV and by such, her steering gears are fragile.
• Aiming System Modification 1: It’s basically the only real option on this slot. Don’t take AA Guns Modification 1, please.
• Steering Gears Modification 2: 9.8 s base rudder shift is frankly not great on this ship, especially since it’s supposed to stay on the move most of the time. Don’t take Propulsion Modification 2 as it only helps for the first 6 kts when accelerating from 0 and doesn’t do anything for decelerations and such.
• Concealment System Modification 1: The lower concealment will allow you to pick your engagements more easily and will also give you more opportunities to disengage when needed. You can use Steering Gears Modification 3 if you want but in my opinion, it’s a bit overkill and 7.9 s rudder shift will be more than enough.

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Yuzorah

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