Greetings ladys and gentlemen.

I started playing Maokai a lot, and I made my own build for him.
Believe me, this will make you king of everything!

You can play him jungle, support, mid and top with this single build, it is amazing!
Of course, for jungle and support, there are some things different, but I will guide you to victory!

The reason I made this guide, is because no one else had a guide like this and I think I need to share this with the world.

!!!WARNING!!! This is not following meta! This is meant to be fresh and new. If you do not like that, pick the top guide, I am sure he is just following boring meta. !!!WARNING!!!

Well, even though this guide is godlike, it still has cons, so we will discuss them.

Pros:
+ High damage early game
+ Tanky late game
+ High variety in spells
+ Bush check
+ Knock back
+ Initiate
+ Midkai is very underestemated
+ You can carry your team very hard
+ This can be the ticket out of elo hell
+ You are an evil tree

Cons:
- High mana costs
- Maokai requires certain skill
- If you play Maokai support, you will not be full support
- Your initiate can get you in sticky situations

Overall, Maokai is a great champion with great possibilitys, and I will guide you the way of mister Tree!

So what can Maokai do?

Just like any other champion, he consists of a passive, 3 regular spells and an ultimate.

Sap Magic Passive
This passive allows you to have good lane sustain early game, and great survival late game.
It is not obligatory that YOU do all the spells necessary to activate this passive. Whether it is you, your ally or your enemy, every spell counts for your passive.
Use it well.

Arcane smash Q
Your knockback, slow and damage. The big pro of this spell is that it has the same amount of mana cost for all 5 levels. For that reason, a lot of guides recommend taking and upgrading it first. I do not, because saplings are much stronger. When you are close to the target, try to knock him in to your team, this will be easier by using you W aswell.
I max this skill second

Twisted Advance W
Your initiate and damage. This initiate is very awesome. It is a targeted skill and will go through all obstacles between you and your target. This can allow great chasing, initiating and also escaping. Do not forget when you are the one to get chased, to use it on the enemy which is close to you, to W him and trap him for 1 to 2 seconds.
Keep in mind with this spell is that you will always go to your target when used. So if you were to use it on a tristana who jumps away and then flashes aswell making her standing under her Nexus Obelisk, then you will stand there aswell.
I max this skill last

Sapling Toss E
Your bush check, your real source of damage and your must fun ability. This spell has a huge amount of damage. If you throw it and hit, it will also explode, doing great amounts of damage. If you miss, then the sapling will run to the closest target anyway and explode then later on. This ability costs a lot of mana and has a rather long cooldown. Though, because it is a godlike build, we want as much damage as possible early on.
I max this skill first

Vengeful Maelstrom Ultimate
Your defense, aura and damage. This is a special ultimate which reduces all damage taken within the circle, this counts for everyone in your team. The amount of damage gain within this circle will increase the amount of damage done when you remove the circle. This has a short cooldown, but also a high mana cost. Use this when you or your allies are under attack and make sure that both your teammates as your enemies are within your circle, to both protect as deal damage.
I max this whenever I can

There are plenty of summonner spells, and a lot useful for Maokai:

The awesome one:
Flash
Allows you to get closer to W the enemy easier or escape tricky situations. When I use this to chase, make sure you always keep your W in mind.


Dependent ones:
Ignite
This spell is for midkai. It allows you to have a stronger full combo and make finishing enemys off easier.

Teleport
This spell is for topkai. It allows you to fail once in your lane, allows awesome teleport ganks and you can also backdoor easily if your team wards well.

Smite
This spell is obviously for junglekai. I doubt I need to explain this.

Clairvoyance vs Exhaust
These spells could be used for supportkai, though, you might still prefer ignite or teleport due to lanesustain or the last bits of damage.

Ghost
This might be a replacement for flash, but this removes the suprise effect from your initiates and from your escapes. Due to the length of the spell, it is still a viable spell and is worth to take in consideration.


The rest:
MEIYJHE DOES NOT APPROVE

This part I do not find so important because they make very little difference.

I am just saying that I take defensive masteries and offensive runes. You can also switch them around if you wish. If you really care about it scroll a bit up, I did some thinking for it, but I just feel that there are a lot of different good solutions for Maokai.

Go experiment yourself and go to the next chapter! :D

If you follow this build combined with the skill rotation, then you will optimise both your damage as your tankiness. The item build is simple:

Meki Pendant + Health Potion
As a starter I prefer these items. The pendant gives you enough starting regen for your sapling and your health potion will give you more survival.
You could also start with booth and 3 pots (2 mana and 1 health), but it doesn't have the same feeling as a meki pendant. Sure you walk faster, but as maokai, you do not need that much speed early game.

Chalice of Harmony
Get this item asap! With this item your mana will not be destroyed by your saplings. Also, when played mid, it gives you a nice MR boost.

Mercury's Treads
You are still a tank, thus should be treated like one. When you are CC'd you are useless, and I do not want you to be useless, get this thing and you are awesome. You also could think about getting ninja tabi, but I find it very rare that the enemy has no CC at all, and only then I would get ninja tabi as maokai.

Athene's Unholy Grail
No more mana problems, more CDR and more MR. Everything you want early game and late game. Saplings can be spammed more often and less worries about damage from others.
That is enough reason to pick this item as first.
If you have amazing farm and kills, you might even consider this item to take before merc treads. Because like said earlier, Maokai needs more mana regen early game than speed.

Heart of Gold
We are going to buy Randuins Omen eventually anyway, so let us get this item as soon as possible for the reason of profiting from this item even more.

Rylai's Crystal Scepter
Grants health, ap and a slow. The health will make you more tanky, and the slow will make you more supportive. This is a necessary item due to those facts, besides it grants 80 ap aswell.

Abyssal Mask
Grants you MR, AP and MR reduction. MR is always useful as being a tank, and ap as a god tank. The MR reduction is also very handy for when you fight the enemy, you are always in the middle of their team, reducing all of their teams magic resistance by 20.

Randuin's Omen
Grants health, armor, health regen, AS reduction, movement speed reduction and CDR. This item is everything left needed for tankkai. This item allows you to survive physical attacks, and when the active is used well, reducing their AS even more than it already would with your passive.

Rabadon's Deathcap
Grants massive ap. This is your last godkai item, for it will make you very destructive. Though rabadons is quite an offensive choice, you can also use balanced defense items like:
Guardian angle, Aegis of the leagion, Warmogs armor or Spirit visage. The last item is up to you, but I just prefer destruction thus I chose the deathcap.

Like said earlier, this is a bit different.

Other than the way of mister Tree, you must get either health regen first, boots or cloth armor. I myself start mostly with regrowth pendant, so I can built it later to a philosophers stone. You do not really need it, but the extra gold is very nice. Do not sell this item untill you at least reached 400g from this item. Because if you sell it, you get 400g again, 400 + 400 = 800 and 800 is the amount of money you spent, so yeah, you do not need to be a genius to know that.

Just like any other jungler, you start with blue, throw some saplings and you are on your way.
Maokai jungling isnt very hard, just keep your mana and your passive in mind, so that you can stay as long in the jungle as is necessary.

Do not gank untill you have W. When you gank, just use W, walk around your target to the enemy turret side and then use Q to get him close to your ally. Predict his movement and throw a sapling that way, and if you follow these steps you have a succesful gank.

Like said earlier, jungling with Maokai isn't hard + will not affect my guide. Just keep following my skill order and my items, only ignore the starting item meki pendant, and you should be fine.

This is again very different.

Myself, I do not prefer support because lategame you aren't really a support due to the no warding part, but your slows and snare still will make you a viable support.

Here you might want to get more gold per 10 items and maybe also max Q or W instead of E.
Gold per 10 items are pretty clear, since you are not allowed to farm.
Maxing Q or W will allow you to snare easier because leveling up Q increases your slow and W increases your snare. E is only mana draining.

Once you get out of lane phase, follow my guide again and you will be Mister Treelike again.

You are maokai, you aren't a part of the team, you ARE the team.

You should always be the one initiating, not your ally, not your enemy! When you are in the middle, cast ulti, sapling. Use your Q to throw carrys to your teams or bruisers away from your team. Then just look: where are the weaklings, follow them, give them a hard life. When you have Rylai's, you can slow them with your saplings, and w on them again, making them easy kills.

This will require some practise, but the art of league of legends over all is to see order within chaos, and this is especially important as maokai. See everything your enemy does and your allys are doing. Do this, and you win!

I hope I will see some great Maokai's on the summonners rift.

Though there is little interest for mister Tree and a big patch coming up aswell changing everything, I'd still love to see some mister Tree's on league of legends.

Thank you all for reading and have a nice day ;D

-Meiyjhe the awesome-

Please, I want to know what you think of my guide :P

So please leave comments and your votes.

I would be grateful
-Meiyjhe