Maokai Build Guide by Razormaul

Introduction

Hello. I am Razormaul a player who enjoys support like junglers. Such as Maokai Nautilus and Amumu. I am going to be making guides for all of my favorite support junglers, I hope you enjoy them.

Maokai is one of the support type junglers. He brings great utility to the team with a snare, knock back and 20 % damage reduction for his team. I build Maokai with a lot of cdr and resistances/hp rather than with ap. I do this becuase I find ap Maokai to be very squishy and can't initiate as well as he can when he is tanky.

Other Guides and Abbreviations

Guides

• Alistar Guide: The Guide
• Nautilus Guide: The Guide

• CC = Crowd Control=Stuns/Snares/Taunts etc.
• AP = Ability Power.
• CDR = Cooldown Reduction.
• AOE = Area Of Effect, i.e Sapling Toss.
• HP = Health Points.
• OOM = Out of Mana
• AD = Attack Damage

Runes

Runes
Greater Mark of Attack Speed 9	Greater Seal of Armor 9	Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist 5	Greater Glyph of Ability Power 4	Greater Quintessence of Ability Power 3

• Marks 9 Greater Mark of Attack Speed I get the attack speed marks to speed up jungling times.
• Seals 9 Greater Seal of Armor I get flat armor seals to keep your hp high in the jungle.
• Glyphs 4 Greater Glyph of Ability Power I get 4 to reach 19.5 ap. You need 19.5 ap to take wraiths without auto attacking them at level 1.
  5 Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist Magic Resist per level is more useful than flat magic resist as you wont be taking much magic damage early game.
  
• Quintessences 3 Greater Quintessence of Ability Power These quintessences help us to reach 19.5 ability power.

Greater Glyph of Ability Power

Masteries

Masteries

1/1

3/4

2/2

4/3

2/1

1/2

1/1

3/1

3/3

1/3

1/1

3/3

4/1

1/1

• Hardiness - Take less damage during ganks and from jungle mobs.
• Summoner's Resolve - 10 gold roughly every 70 seconds adds up.
• Tough Skin - Take less damage in the jungle.
• Durability - To be a bit beefier late game.
• Bladed Armor - To clear jungle mobs quicker.

• Summoner's Insight - Lower the cooldown on Flash.
• Expanded Mind - Extra mana lets you stay in the jungle for longer.
• Swiftness - Easier to gank and initiate with more movement speed. Increases clear time.
• Runic Affinity - To have Lizard Elder , Crest of the Ancient Golem and Baron Nashor buff for longer.
• Greed - Allows you to get Wealth and the gold adds up after time.
• Wealth - Lets you start the game with an extra health potion.
• Awareness - Being a higher level is always good.
• Intelligence - Increases clear time.
• Mastermind - For shorter cooldown on Flash and Smite.

Items

Starting items: These items give nice sustain in your first round through the jungle and leaves you with enough hp to gank.

Core Mid game items:

• Shurelya's Reverie is a great item for catching people out of position. Using Flash and shurelya's and than Twisted Advance can be great for initiation. Get this every game.
• Ninja Tabi Against a team with lots of ad and lacking cc.
• Mercury's Treads Against a team with lot of magic damage and cc.
• Aegis of the Legion is a great item for all supporty tanks. Ask your team if anybody is planning on buying this item as having more than one is bad.
• Oracle's Elixir is a great item when you are ahead. With this you can clear the others team's Sight Ward resulting in easy objectives and more succesful ganks.
• Sight Ward You want to buy at least two sight wards every time you back to base. These are the most important part of your item build.
  

• Spirit Visage is good when the other team has a lot of magic damage.Makes your passive heal a bit more.
• Glacial Shroud can be built into Frozen Heart which is great. Getting Spirit Visage and Glacial Shroud early provides lots of resistances and cdr. Its a good combo of items.
• Negatron Cloak can be picked up early and later on made into a Banshee's Veil or Force of Nature.

• Frozen Heart is a must in every game. The passive is great, the cdr is great, the armor is great, Frozen Heart is just great.
• Warmog's Armor if you have a lot of resistances this item is great.
• Force of Nature you can get this from your early Negatron Cloak. It's a great item against ap champs. Provides nice movement speed to catch up to people. It also gives nice health regen when Warmog's Armor is finished.
• Randuin's Omen I rarely get this item as i usually have max cdr from Frozen Heart, Shurelya's Reverie and Spirit Visage.But if they have a lot of physical damage I will get a Heart of Gold very early and skip the Spirit Visage.
• Banshee's Veil is good vs champs like Morgana and Karthus because of the spell shield.
• Abyssal Scepter I rarely get this item as I play Maokai as a full tank, but if I feel my team is lacking damage or I am getting fed I might consider this item.

Skill Sequence

Ability Sequence
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18

• Level 1 - Take Sapling Toss as it lets you clear the wraith camp and get to blue buff before it spawns. It also lets you to scout the map for any counter jungling which may occur.
• Level 2 - Take Arcane Smash so you can take wolves, wraiths, golems and red buff quicker. Also helps at level 3/4 gank.
• Level 3 - Take Sapling Toss if you plan on continuing jungling otherwise take Twisted Advance.
• Level 4 - Depending on what you leveled during level 3 get either Sapling Toss or Twisted Advance.
• Level 5 - You want to start maxing Arcane Smash now so take another point in it.
• Level 6 - Take Vengeful Maelstrom for teamfights and extra burst damage.

Sapling Toss

Arcane Smash

Twisted Advance

Vengeful Maelstrom

Twisted Advance

Twisted Advance

Summoner Spells

You need Smite for jungling as it increases clear time and it helps you to secure objectives such as Baron or Dragon.

I know some Maokai players that take Ghost over Flash (if you do this change masteries) but I like flash as you can flash and than use Twisted Advance which usually results in a kill while ganking.

Jungle Route-Level 4 gank

Video of route: Remember I don't get a pull.You will have quicker clear times and more hp than I do, if you get a pull.


This is the most common jungle route you will take.You only do a different route if you plan on invading or ganking very early or if you got invaded. The route is,

• Wraiths - Take the wraiths as I show in the video. IMPORTANT you NEED 19.5 Ability Power to do this. If you dont have 19.5 Ability power you need to auto attack the Big Wraith a couple of times.
• Crest of the Ancient Golem - Let your mid lane pull blue buff for you. Use Sapling Toss twice and Smite to kill the Crest of the Ancient Golem
• Wolves - Auto Attack the two small wolves once each. Use Arcane Smash twice and Sapling Toss once.
• Wraiths - Auto attack the big wraith. Use Arcane Smash twice and Sapling Toss once.
• Golems - Auto attack the big golem. Use spells whenever you can.
• Lizard Elder - Auto attack the Lizard Elder . Smite it when it gets to 450 Health Points.
• If you spawned on the purple side you can gank top or mid.
• If you spawned on the blue side you can gank bot or mid.
• If there is nowhere good to gank you can clear the jungle again and than recall or look for a gank.

Jungle Route-Level 3 gank

If I spawn on purple side and our top laner has some cc (characters like Renekton and Shen) and the other teams top laner has no escapes (characters like Mordekaiser, Nasus and Olaf) than I will take this route. The route is,

• Wraiths - Take the wraiths as I show in the video. IMPORTANT you NEED 19.5 Ability Power to do this. If you dont have 19.5 Ability power you need to auto attack the Big Wraith a couple of times.
• Crest of the Ancient Golem - To do this route you need bot lane to help you a lot with this camp. You don't Smite Crest of the Ancient Golem as we need Smite for the Lizard Elder . Get the bot lane to help you take the Ancient Golem to 300 hp and finish it off with auto attacks and spells. Make sure they don't take experience.
• Lizard Elder - Keep Smite for the Lizard Elder
• Gank Top lane. Go through the Tri-Bush and into the river. From there gank the lane. Make sure to tell your top lane to have his cc ready. Remember to level up Twisted Advance at this time instead of Sapling Toss
• If you have enough hp proceed to gank another lane or clear the jungle, otherwise recall.

How To gank

Videos of Successful Ganks:
I use the sapling to be able to see into the bush so I can use Twisted Advance
Maokai is a very good ganker with two cc's. When ganking if possible you want your teammate who you are ganking for to use their cc first than you use Sapling Toss followed up by Twisted Advance than walk behind them and knock them away from their turret. Put your ultimate between them and their turret so they have to walk through it. Remember to press r again for the damage.

Lane Gank

Successful lane gank video: Lane Ganking is when you sneak into a bush in either top or bot lane.You wait for an opportune moment to attack and you come out of the bush making it a 3v2 or 2v1 fight.

Team Fighting

Maokais job in a teamfight is to keep his carries safe or to lock down enemy carries. You either want to Twisted Advance the enemies carry if they are in a bad position, otherwise use Twisted Advance on the enemies that are chasing your allies down.
Don't keep your ultimate on at all times as you will go oom and be useless to your team. Instead keep it for when that Morgana, Galio or Kennen ultimate is being used. Most people try to avoid fighting inside of Vengeful Maelstrom you can use this to your advantage.

Tips and Tricks

• You can use Sapling Toss as a free 'sight ward'.
• Using Shurelya's Reverie followed up by Flash and using Twisted Advance onto the enemies ad carry can be a great way to start a team fight
• Don't keep your ultimate on at all times as you will go oom and be useless to your team. Instead keep it for when that Morgana, Galio or Kennen ultimate is being used.

Summary

Thank you for taking the time to read my Maokai guide. If you like the guide please vote! If you want more tanky, support jungler's guides I have guides for all of them that I enjoy to play. Here is a list of all my other guides.I hope I have helped!

Guides

• Alistar Guide: The Guide
• Nautilus Guide: The Guide