When you think of tanks in the jungle, you probably think of Zac, Nunu & Willump, Gragas, Sejuani, and Amumu. But one you probably add to that list is Maokai, who according to LoLalytics is posting a 54% win Rate as of patch 7.13.

I'd play Zac (12 games played with a 75% win rate) if I could, but he is permabanned and for good reason, played well he is supremely oppressive and I suspect will probably see more nerfs in upcoming patches assuming they keep the functionality that they added to his kit.

On that list, Zac is the only jungler that I've been able to consistently dominate with when I can get my hands on him.

Gragas (39 games played with a 51% win rate) is very reliant on proper usage of his ultimate and you can experience some weird interactions depending on the current facing and heading of an enemy champion, dash abilities, and surrounding terrain.

Nunu & Willump, (7 games played with a 29% win rate) in my experience, is very team reliant. At least at the Gold level where I play, I don't feel like I can do enough on Nunu to carry a game when my lanes fail on their own account. I've spent several games where I've stolen every camp not nailed down and warded up entire sides of the enemy jungle and my team just doesn't take advantage of the vision I've provided and the fact that the enemy jungle is down a level or two of where they otherwise would be.

Sejuani (3 games played with a 33% win rate) perhaps I simply need to put more time into her, but I haven't managed to micro her clear well enough to be healthy enough when it comes time to decide if I want to gank or invade the enemy jungle and I find her Flail of the Northern Winds awkward to target at times.

Amumu (5 games played with a 60% win rate) my main problem with Amumu is that I toggle his Despair off accidentally at very inopportune moments. His engage is also rather telegraphed and despite often getting multi-man ults off I've found my teams often not able to take advantage of it which feels rather sad. I do like how smoothly he clears the Raptors to the point that I will generally go counter jungle the enemy Raptors as soon as possible with him.

But with a 60% win rate I may want to put some more time into him. (which is part of the reason I go through these sorts of exercises from time to time, sometimes the statistics surprise me because as most humans do, I feel losses more strongly than I should and I recently lost a game on Amumu).

Enter Maokai. He has a healthy clear with Sap Magic bolstering his sustain. His saplings do remarkable damage when placed in brush and can act as wards and booby traps for 31 seconds. I lobbed a sapling into the brush by Red buff and a Shaco that was attempting to counter jungle and had laid a box trap in the bush thought better of the prospect. He has great single target lock down with Twisted Advance and an AoE knock back in the form of Bramble Smash. Nature's Grasp can also be used as a form of engage or disengage, though I find it more intuitive to use for the later. It can be used as great zoning tool and enemy champions will get of its path so if you are sieging you can use it push an enemy team off of their turret at least temporarily.

Runes

I started running a build similar to the one that Saint Vicious has been running as he has been spamming Maokai jungle and has several videos on YouTube showing how to clear with him. The videos were super helpful in showing how to maximize the use of your saplings to speed up your clear. His build used 9 Atk Speed Marks, a mix of armor and scaling armor seals, I believe a mix of scaling cool down reduction and scalling magic resistance glyphs, and ability power quints. I modified his rune setup with a mix of 4 armor seals and 5 health per level seals, and traded out the AP quints for movement speed quints and he was complaining about how slow Maokai is without boots. That worked okay for me in a couple of normal games.

But I eventually switched out my runes for the ones depicted in the image above. 9 precision marks, 9 health/level seals, 6 scaling CDR glyphs + 3 scaling MR glyphs, and 3 armor quints, which roughly speaking are the runes suggested by Lolalytics.

Masteries

Masteries were those also proposed by Lolalytics. I feel like they are fairly typical for a tanky jungler. You could probably interchange Courage of the Colossus with Bond of Stone, but I believe Bond of Stone is stronger at the moment.

Things that are weird about Maokai

Sap Magic happens semi-randomly upon auto attack, which has its own animation and it is jarring as it does not have the same rhythm as your other auto attacks as he does a ripping motion as he "saps the life" from his target.

Sapling Toss has a similar motion to Gragas's Explosive Cask. If you throw them a short distance the arc is high and if you throw them a long distance the arc is flatter so they take the same time to travel no matter how far you throw them.

Twisted Advance there will be quite a few times where you just can't get in range to use it. If they wanted pump up Maokai's win rate all you would have to do is increase the range on it. Another oddity is that you can choose to move immediately after you reach a target or you can hold them there a little longer (maybe you want to use the tank to get close enough to ult their back line or if your are running from a group of them and have one enemy in front of you, you can Twisted Advance to them and then quickly let go to try and put distance between the bulk of savages with their axes).

Nature's Grasp is freaking slow and probably needs its own video on optimal usage. I'm still trying to figure out its nuances. I seem to have the best success if I get as close as possible and then set it off and then follow it in and jump on a key target with Twisted Advance to substantially increase the amount of time that they are CCd.

Clearing

I'd recommend watching one of Saint's videos on how to clear the jungle with Maokai as there is some microing that is peculiar to Maokai due to how his saplings work.

Starting Blue you can easily do a full clear, but you cannot manage it from Red side as you will not have enough mana and pathing to Krugs is inefficient.

You can clear from either side of the jungle. If I start red side and want to do raptors on my way to the other side of the jungle then I only drop two saplings into the bush beside red buff as otherwise you will run out of mana before you get to Blue buff. You could conceivable start Raptors with a 3 sapling start but I haven't tried it yet and I'm not sure how leashing would go since your saplings do a lot of damage but you have to kite the raptors toward the bush next to their camp. Saplings last 31 seconds so on a buff camp you can start dropping them at 109 on the clock. Raptors spawn at 137 so can start placing saplings at 106 on the clock.

Blue side you can do a three sapling start and throw a fourth on Blue buff while your are doing it, however that means that your sapling will be on cool down when you go over to wolves and they take a while to do. You Twisted Advance makes you untargetable so you can use it dodge autoattacks from the camp you are tageting, though I tend not to use it to clear due to the mana cost.

Match-ups

I've found Lee Sin to be a pain in the butt as far as match-ups go. He can bother you in your jungle and cause havoc in your lanes more readily than you can in the early game.

Ganking

As far as ganking goes, look for lanes with high early game damage. You bring the CC. Ideally you want to come in from behind your target. And lob a sapling in the place that it would be most likely for them to escape to (a bush being ideal but not required). Start wailing on them and when they use their escape ability use Twisted Advance to catch up to them and then walk behind them and then use Bramble Smash to knock them away from safety. If they still might get away you can use your ult for additional CC. Due to the fact that your ult can catch multiple targets put a priority on ganking Bot lane once you have it.

Counter jungling

While not the most mobile champion you can peel a champion(s) off of yourself with Bramble Smash and if you can find something targetable like a minion or jungle monster you can use Twisted Advance to give yourself some distance from your pursuers and as a last resort you can use your ult in a lot of instances as a get the blaank off of me card.

Itemization

As an example:

Enchantment: Cinderhulk
Abyssal Mask
Knight's Vow
Spirit Visage
Thornmail

As a tank you want a balance of resists and health. If that happens to include some utility so much the better. If you team needs engage you can trade out Knight's Vow for Turbo Chemtank.

Boots and jungle item to suit the match and/or your play style. I tend to like Stalker's Blade as it helps me get in range to catch a target out with Twisted Advance.

If by chance the enemy team is mostly AD but has a little bit of magic damage and since you often end up in the middle of team fight you could opt for Gargoyle Stoneplate to beef yourself up further.