Basically this is your lane sustain that helps against opponents who tend to use their abilities alot. Every time that 5 abilities have been used your next auto heals you. Pair this with Spirit Visage and Grasp of the Undying, well lets just say you gonna be healing alot

NEW STUFF: sadly his passive is getting a CD which honestly sucks. This means instead of being well rounded he'll be better later in the game, and worse against non caster opponents like Tryndamere

This is a really cool ability because if you are close enough to your opponent when you use this ability it counts as a knockup. That means that a Yasuo can use his ulti Last Breath off of your arcane smash. This ability doesn't stop on the first target hit, meaning it works good as poke/wave clear. You can use arcane smash to farm a wave(be careful at early levels because it has a long cd and uses a decent chunk of mana) and if it hits an enemy champion in the process, congrats you just got free poke off.

This is your engage or hard cc, plz do not use it on a minion unless it is to outplay an opponent or dodge an ability. When this ability is going through, the underground travelling animation means you are invulnerable to any source of damage. When timed right you can avoid things like Counter Strike

Get this first and throw it into bushes for vision. This can also be used for that longer range harass under turret.once you get to around lvl 6 with the runes and masteries I use, you can Sapling Toss into the caster minions, then arcane smash them and with the second proc of Sapling Toss you will clear the entire caster minion wave.

NEW STUFF: so what is going to change in 7.9 is that if the sapplings land in a bush they do more damage rather than in an open area.

Basically pop this when you get into a fight so you become tankier and your allies take less damage. If your opponents disengage don't forget that you can re activate Vengeful Maelstrom to end it, otherwise it will drain mana per second and you end up with virtually no mana at the end of the 10 seconds.
NEW STUFF: This is the saddest part for me personally. They are removing this ulti as of 7.9 and instead Maokai will have a nami like ult, instead of knocking opponents up, he will root them instead. This massively reduces his dueling potential and will force his play style to be more passive.

So there are two new items coming in the upcoming patches along with changes to current tank items. While this doesn't change your starting items entirely(though dorans shield might now be a slightly better pick) it might change the way you should build. The new items are;

Adaptive helm: so this item is cool beacuse "Taking magic damage from a spell or effect reduces all subsequent magic damage taken from that spell or effect by 15% for 4 seconds." This means DoT champs like Singed, Malzahar and Teemo now have an item to counter them. I think this will be great on Maokai since it also gives health, magic resist, and health regen.

Gargoyle's stoneplate :This item in my oppinion is ridiculously broken. you get bonus resistances when there are three or more enemies, plus in a fight if you activate it your champ size damage reduction and health all increase, and if its 3 or more champs the health increase goes from a 40% increase to a 100% increase. Honestly, pop this in a team fight or a 3v1 and you will enter god mode.

:I say Riven is easy because once you hit lvl 4 she cant fight you w/o ganks, and if their jg is a Hecarim its even easier. The thing is with Riven she tends to use her q Broken Wings, the third proc of Broken Wings knocks you up, however your q arcane smash can cancel this animation and prevent the knockup. if she tries to dash away with Valor stop her in her tracks with your Twisted Advance, when she begins her ult Blade of the Exile you'll notice a glow around her sword, when you see that use Vengeful Maelstrom immeadiately, this reduces her increased damage. Riven needs to chain her abilities alot in order to be effective, however this also allows you to proc your passive Sap Magic more often.





: Why do people pick Malphite? because of his ult Unstoppable Force its honestly the biggest factor in a team because its insane engage. In lane a Malphite needs to rely on auto attacks and his E Ground Slam out farm him and make team plays and you will easily win the matchup




: Right now Ekko as a champion is definitely not in meta as a top lane tank, and also Ekko as a champion requires aggressive play mostly because his ulti Chronobreak is his disengage. Don't play aggressive, when he plays aggressive disengage until he uses his Parallel Convergence once he uses this he won't have a stun or a shield and this is his hardest form of cc, so if you can avoid this then you are golde. after that use the Twisted Advance> Sapling Toss> arcane smash> run away for a quick poke combo. don't engage too hard after he is 6 untill his ulti Chronobreak is down




: IMO you counter Sion. Why you ask? Simple. Your Twisted Advance makes immune during its channel (or the time that you are underground). So when Sion uses abilities such as Decimating Smash or Unstoppable Onslaught you can cast your Twisted Advance to get behind him and avoid those abilities. in team fights just stand infront of your carries when Sion ults in order to prevent them from getting knocked up and stunned for an eternity




: The two abilities that hurt for any Cho'Gath are 1) his Rupture and 2) his Feast stay close to Cho'Gath that way when he uses his Rupture you can quickly Twisted Advance to him avoiding the knock up and the damage. That is a signicficant detriment. Cho'Gath will Feast on minions till he has 6 stacks if he is good, you can't really avoid this but youll notice a little circle around your character signaling that if he uses Feast on you he gets a free dinner. try to avoid that as much as possible. Cho'Gath is ap so rush the spectres cowl for better lane phase.




: Don't let him kill you and you win. Garen can farm yes but so can you, and his only use in teamfights is to be annoying and to be a tank that soaks up damage, runs into a bush and comes back out at full health. Help peel for your adc when you see a Garen in teamfights because he is going to try to jump on them.

: so Jarvan IV has a combo where he 100 to 0 s people that is e Demacian Standard>q Dragon Strike>r Cataclysm. However you can stop him early ish by using your q arcane smash to cancel it. When he ults use your Flash or Twisted Advance to a minion to get out quickly




: Initially its not that bad of a matchup and you can win, but once he gets that Frozen Mallet and Phage you life becomes hell. He gets a movement speed boost from Phage and he slows you with Frozen Mallet=infinite kiting in a 1v1 scenario. However it really comes down to his mega. With it he can make or break the game, look for the breaks and capitalize on them.




: this is really a snowbally lane. It 100% depends on who gets snowballed earlier ask your jg for early lane pressure, and try to make their ganks as effective as possible




: early game its like "pffft who does she think she is trying to fight me?" then she gets Trinity Force and its like "ok who fed this women?huh?which one of you four did it?" The power spike she gets from trinity force is ridiculous, so becareful then, she'll definitely try to fight you. Good items against Irelia are Frozen Heart to slow her attack speed and Thornmail but make sure you only get thronmail if their team is mostly AD




: f^&% this champion. Insane range, knock backs, gap closers attack speed increases, momvement speed increase, melee, ranged, gives me cancer, like hes annoying, but the key here is his early game, which is when he is really weak. A wise man once said "don't try to fight a wolf in his pack but rather when he is alone and has no food". translation: don't let him cs early to reduce his gold income and make him weaker, also make sure you have a snowbally jg like Lee Sin or Nocturne so you can get them fed easily.




: try to cs but dont die for, once you hit 6 try roaming, and always look for tp plays, even if you are only tping to mid. Their range makes them annoying and they are going to make sure to use that against you. They squish tho so ganks will be good, but if you can snowball in the early game you should also be fine.




: This man is extremely annoying, he'll constantly be using Undertow to harass you early levels, and whenever he gets low, he'll use Berserker Rage and Tough It Out to never die. Olafs weakpoint is his ulti Ragnarok, while he does gain immunity to cc, he takes increased damage; get your adc to kill him during this time. Don't let him get ahead early cuz then he'll turn the game into a complete nightmare




: once he hits 6 dont try to kill him. his Undying Rage will keep him alive for what appears to be a decade. When you do go in for trades, make sure his rage bar is low because due to Battle Fury and Bloodlust the more points he has in his bar, the more he crits.




: if he doesn't get ahead early you win most of the time. with Kennen it isnt the laning phase you should fear, its the teamfight stage. Slicing Maelstrom plus Mark of the Storm is a deadly combo vs your team, it takes a huge chunk out of squishy targets, if you see him running forward use Twisted Advance on him to give you team a chance to either a) run for their lives or b) kill pikachu(note this is one time where rock types Malphite beat electrical types imo)

: Welcome to your most annoying lane opponent in league of legends. Like the only reason i love playing in this match up is because i never lose it. Now you are probably asking "how come you never lose it if its one of Maokais worst match ups?" easiest question NA, ive played against it so many times, its hard to find a Darius who will beat me in lane w/o camps. Usually a Darius will understand his place in life: ignore minions once he hits lvl 2 b4 you, all in you, get first blood and snowball ffrom there. Darius is usually a lane bully, so thats generally speaking the tactic. So what you gotta do is throw away your "man card" and cs using Sapling Toss and arcane smash. You can pretty much clear a backline of caster minions using theese two abilities, and the runes and masteries I use. This means you can peacefully clear the frontline of the minion wave, because you now have the minion advantage for a trade. Once he hits lvl 6 he becomes scary and you should be careful even under turret. Just clear waves and make tp plays whenever possible. If you tp to pick up kills, get first turret blood and you have to lose your own turret for that, that is 100% ok, cuz the net gold exchange means its more favorable for you.




: once he hits lvl 6 expect ganks. His ult Subjugate makes him a tank killer, and whaddya know? Maokai just so happens to be a tank. He can make use of auto resets using Chomp and Tiamat active also if he gets Sheen his Chomp will be even stronger. Watch out for trades once he gets items but before then try to poke him down with your ninpo: walking seed grenade ( Sapling Toss)

: TILT honestly seeing a singed hover on my team or theirs, tilts me so hard, because the champion is so tilting. FREAKING RIOT GAVE HIM THE ABILITY EVERYTIME HE USES HIS Fling HE FREAKING LAUGHS. WHY RITO WHY YOU DO DIS TO ME??? He runs around with poison so chasing him kills you (which is beautiful but also tilting) all he wants to do is proxy (if hes good) if you kill him when hes proxying he wins, beacuse you lose out on minions, if you don't he wins by not letting you have a wave. Plus his ulti Insanity Potion gives him bonus health, mana regen, movement speed and bonus ap and ad. its just unnessicarily tilting to play against this champ. My suggestion is to make sure your jg and sup have forms of cc, and your jg has a dash ability like vi. Ask them to give you and early camp, and your team should have a chance. Also rush Zz'Rot Portal because it will counter singed if he tries to proxy the rot will give you minions to help push with.

-In this scenario you can mostly do then engage and force some chaos in the enemy team. Use Twisted Advance to engage on a target, either someone who is too far up or someone who will die quickly. The enemy team will start to target you, so you pop your ulti Vengeful Maelstrom in order to reduce the damage that you take, and help your teammates live longer. At this point you are just there to soak up damage.

-Here what you want to do is to let someone else make the engage. You want to save your Twisted Advance to help peel for your adc. when I say immobile im talking about characters like Kog'maw who deal a **** ton of damage , they squish, but they don't have high levels of mobility, meaning if they get jumped then they are dead. Keep assassins and otherss off of the adc as much as possible because in this scenario, if the adc lives, you win the fight. However if the rest of your team is behind then try to avoid fights

- Do not fight, and try to not get caught out. If your team does get caught out try your best to preserve those with wave clear and the carries. Other than that do not to die.