Maokai Professional Guide – Purpose, Playstyle, Runes & Build

First of all, thanks for reading this guide — I hope it helps you a lot!

Maokai is my main and best champion, so here I’m sharing a full approach covering his purpose, playstyle, runes, and optimal build.

If you really want to become a true Maokai main and get the most value out of him, you need to understand these concepts.

Purpose

Maokai is a champion with enormous utility. His main strength is crowd control (CC) — stuns, roots, and slows. He’s ideal for engaging fights, protecting carries, catching enemies, and controlling key areas of the map with vision from his Saplings.

Playstyle

Maokai can adapt to multiple styles, such as:

Full AP + HP Mage (like he’s played in the jungle right now)

Tank with armor and magic resist

Tank stacking pure HP

Protector with shields and healing

Choosing the right style for how you want to play is fundamental — and understanding it will take you to the next level.

The mistake most players make is copying builds (runes and items) that, even if they’re “core,” don’t actually match their playstyle — so they lose a lot of efficiency.

If you choose to play as a protector, your job is to stay with your team — not to be pushing a side lane alone with no damage or real utility.
If you go full mage (rare, but let’s use it as an example), you can’t be your team’s main hard-engager and just sit in a fight. You can engage, yes, but you need to back out quickly because you don’t have the tankiness to stay.
If you go full armor/MR tank, you can engage and stay in fights forever, but you won’t do much damage.

My Personal Style

I play Maokai top with an aggressive, engage-focused style, mixing damage, tankiness, and ability haste to maximize my CC uptime.

Key considerations:

If I only build armor: I lose too much damage.

If I have no ability haste: I lose ability frequency, therefore CC per second.

If I go full mage: I lack durability and I can’t survive in fights.

The key question to ask yourself is:

What items and runes actually fit my playstyle?

Runes

Here are the runes I use for this aggressive and versatile style:

Grasp of the Undying

Damage: 3.5% of your max HP

Healing: 1.3% of your max HP

Permanent HP stacking

Explanation:
This rune gives the perfect combination for my playstyle. Much more useful than Aftershock, Arcane Comet, or Phase Rush in this setup.
Comet can work if you want to poke aggressively, but Grasp procs faster, scales your max HP, heals you, and increases your damage based on HP — exactly what we want.

Shield Bash

Bonus Damage when gaining a shield: 2.5% of max HP + 15% of the shield value

Explanation:
The passive becomes extremely powerful with Winter’s Approach / Fimbulwinter, giving you bonus damage every time you get a shield — and even more when enemies are nearby, since the shield doubles.

It usually activates mid game (once you get your second legendary item), but it provides huge bonus damage scaling with no ceiling.

This is what I want — not to be a big tank that does no damage.

Second Wind

Heals 4% of missing HP after taking enemy damage.

Explanation:
This provides constant sustain when taking damage, which is key since we’ll be looking for frequent trades to proc Grasp and stack HP.

Overgrowth

Grants +3.5% total HP once fully stacked.

Explanation:
The goal of this setup is to scale HP, and Overgrowth is essential for that.

Secondary Runes
Triumph

Heals 5% of missing HP + 2.5% max HP on kills/assists.

Grants bonus gold.

Explanation:
Gives you incredible sustain in fights, helping you keep going after every takedown.

Legend: Haste

Grants up to +15 ability haste after fully stacked.

Explanation:
As you can see, everything here synergizes with our main goal: more ability haste = more CC uptime = more pressure in fights.

Bonus Shards:

+8 ability haste

Double HP scaling shards (10-180 HP each)

Summary

These runes give you:

Permanent HP scaling

%HP damage

Constant sustain

Ability haste for more CC

Everything you need for this version of Maokai.

Build
1. Starting Item – Doran’s Shield

Necessary to trade safely, heal, and scale with Grasp in early lane.

2. Liandry’s Anguish

Gives AP, HP, and %HP burn damage.

Explanation:
You don’t need to stack raw AP — Liandry’s gives scaling damage based on enemy max HP, which scales naturally as the game progresses.
Combined with mana and ability haste, your abilities burn constantly — giving you strong DPS.

Personally, I don’t like Sunfire Aegis or Hollow Radiance (formerly Bami’s upgrades) because they force you to stay too close to enemies. Liandry’s lets you poke with abilities, kite, wait for cooldowns, and re-engage.

3. Ionian Boots of Lucidity

Ability haste + summoner spell haste.

Explanation:
Your power comes from casting abilities often. Upgraded boots also give bonus MS on hit once finished.

4. Winter’s Approach / Fimbulwinter

Gives HP, mana, and ability haste.

Explanation:
Generates strong shields every time you apply CC. If there are multiple enemies nearby, the shield doubles.

Synergizes perfectly with Shield Bash for even more damage.
Also gives bonus HP from the extra mana, totaling around 700 HP for just 2400 gold — very cost-efficient.

5. Radiant Virtue (a.k.a. Everlasting Despair in some regions)

Gives HP, armor, MR, ability haste, and an AoE passive that deals 3% of your max HP as damage every 4s + heals you for 250% of the damage dealt.

Explanation:
You deal AoE damage and heal massively in extended fights.

The synergy with Liandry’s is insane — the passive AoE damage also applies Liandry’s burn, so you can keep burning enemies without even casting abilities.

6. Spirit Visage

Gives HP, MR, ability haste, and regen.

Explanation:
Its passive increases all healing and shields by 25%, boosting your passive heal, Triumph, runes, and items. Even if you don’t need MR, this is too valuable to skip.

7. Heartsteel

Massive HP and HP regen.
Deals bonus damage based on your max HP.
Scales your HP infinitely.

Explanation:
Constantly increases your max HP, which empowers your runes, abilities, items, and overall damage output.

Final Considerations

You might ask:

“What if I’m against Jax? Should I buy Frozen Heart? What about Dr. Mundo — Thornmail?”

The answer is simple: don’t break your core scaling build just to react to one enemy. If possible, let your support or another teammate cover anti-heal or specialized armor/MR.
Breaking your core will hurt your efficiency and waste gold.

If you want to play full armor tank, you can — but you’ll lose frequent CC uptime, damage, and sustain.

Hard to Counter

Most players build penetration (armor/magic), but they rarely build Grievous Wounds or anti-shield items.
Unless you’re in high elo, you won’t often face proper healing/shield counters — which makes this build even more oppressive.