So I know Wukong is in a pretty good spot at the moment, maybe even a tad overtuned after the nerf and follow up mini-buff.

That said, his mana costs are absolutely atrocious. Part of that is the mana increase nerf on his W, but his mana costs are just high comparative to his mana pool in lane. Two to three full combos and you are straight out of mana. Every engage is treated as a pseudo all-in.

Why is this balanced? Note I'm not being passive-aggressive here, I'm actually asking the question "why is this balanced?" because he's pretty balanced overall. That said, I don't like the "you get 3 chances to kill someone and then you have to back and miss a wave" playstyle, honestly. But that's neither here nor there in the discussion.

What goes into the decision-making process for skill resources, and how does Riot generally balance them? The reason I ask is that against someone like Garen - who has no mana and has continuous HP regen in lane - Wukong actually out trades Garen in a vacuum, the only issue is that Garen will regen his HP back up before Wukong can kill him. Just makes for interesting play - if Wu didn't have mana costs, he would barely win the lane assuming equal (and high) skill, but because he has mana costs, he loses it pretty hard.

The biggest reason I favor TF over BORK in most matchups is because TF has mana in the build, honestly. It's a good chunk of my "reasoning" between the two, as they are otherwise pretty similar in scope (TF being more bursty, while BORK gives sustain and better chasing power). That 250 mana allows another two full bursts of his EQW.