Many people are waiting for Taka to be buffed or revised. I hear people asking for it all the time on the forums and Reddit, talking as though he isn’t viable. I even saw one subject line that asked “Is Taka dead?”

The biggest secret about Taka is that he doesn’t need a buff. In fact, the developers recently stated that Taka is in a good place right now. Not only do I agree with this, but I believe you’re going to start seeing an increasing amount of Taka players in higher skill tiers. If you’re wondering how this is possible, continue reading.

I think what most people might be missing is that he received a significant buff on April 1st – the release of 1.3.0 – but it was pretty much overlooked. Even as I reread this patch note (see above image), it doesn’t seem like much. In fact, the wording makes it feel like an insignificant bug fix with more Taka revisions on the way; however, it was quite the opposite.

The Calculated Value of House of Kamuha

Taka’s heroic perk, House of Kamuha, is supposed to be a key part of his kit. When all 5 Ki stacks have been built, it provides automatic critical strikes (+50% damage), 30% lifesteal, 125% cooldown acceleration (CDA), and frequent movement speed boosts. That’s an insane amount of power and is terrifying if used correctly. If you were to take all those benefits and convert them into items, this is the approximate gold value:

100% crit chance = ~3000 gold

30% lifesteal = ~600 gold

125% CDA = ~1500 gold

Frequent movement speed boosts = priceless

Taka’s heroic perk – if functioning properly – is worth 1000’s of gold in statistics; however, due to this bug, it was very unreliable, not activating when it should, and making it hard for a player to consistently build and maintain Ki stacks. For a very detailed description of the bug, go to this forum post.

The Harsh Impact of a Bugged House of Kamuha

House of Kamuha has been bugged as far back as I can remember (December of 2014). In fact, this has been a problem for so long that people just assumed that Taka needed a buff before he could be viable. It has affected the ability for Taka players to see success in higher skill tiers and affected perceptions to the extent that players will sometimes queue dodge if they see someone lock in a Taka during hero selection. Here’s some more ways that a malfunctioning heroic perk affected him:

It dramatically slowed his jungle clear times, causing him to often fall behind in gold and experience.

It caused his early game to be weak – beyond the slower accumulation of gold and experience – because he was more reliant upon his abilities to do damage. This also made him susceptible to early game bullying.

Since he was more reliant upon his abilities to do damage, a lot of Taka players would ignore their team in the early game and try to farm up to level 6 and get a Tension Bow as quickly as possibly. This inspired a lot of “lone wolf” Taka play styles, resulting in a lot of hostilities towards Taka players in general.

Lastly, weapon builds weren’t really a viable option since his perk was unreliable.

Have you ever seen a Taka rush Tension Bow first? How about a Taka that rushed Tension Bow followed by Aftershock? I think we all have. This is how I used to play Taka and I even created videos on how to build and play him with Tension Bow and Aftershock. The reason Taka had to resort to this bursty, hit-and-run play style was simply a workaround because none of this play style was reliant upon his heroic perk functioning appropriately. For this same reason, you might have seen several crystal power Takas running around, which are also not reliant upon his heroic perk functioning appropriately. However, now that his heroic perk is fixed, a whole new world – a better world – is open to Taka players and they’re not even aware of it.

If you look at the suggested items for Taka, the developers intended for him to be a weapon damage hero and I believe this vision is now able to come to fruition. While I largely disagree with the recommended item build for Taka, I do believe that weapon damage is now the most terrifying way to build him, giving you great strength in all phases of the game – early, mid, and late – if if you learn how to leverage his heroic perk. If you want to see some examples of this, check out the gameplay video I posted last week.

Stay Tuned

I hope you’ve found this useful and that your eyes are now opened to the unlocked potential of Taka. In my next post, I’ll be talking about the flaws of traditional Taka builds and showing why we need new ways to build Taka. Following that, I’ll be providing thorough guides for building and playing WP Taka.

— Gadianton

Other posts in this series: