Table of contents:
Introduction
Why Play Maokai?
Runes / Masteries
Abilities
Items
Strategy
Thank You!
Change Log
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HAI EVERYONE! My name is Alex, but you can call me Poro. I'm a player on the NA server and I recently climbed my way from wood tier to plat. I have a wide champion pool so I'm going to release a series of guides to help players struggling to get out of low elo. This guide is pretty long because it covers how to properly play one of my 3 mains,
Maokai with two of the more popular jungle play styles, as well as the increasingly popular top lane build. So... if you don't have a lot of time to read my explanation for runes and such, just use the cheat sheet above, and read the
Abilities and
Strategy chapters at the bottom.
IMPORTANT STUFF LIKE THIS IS IN PINK GUYS!
Anyhow, thanks for looking at my guide on
Maokai, The Twisted Treant! If you guys would comment and vote it would be greatly appreciated!
UPDATE: ON THE FRONT PAGE OF MOBAFIRE
<3 THANKS GUYS!!! <3
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Maokai is one of those champions that fell off after the start of season 3. And when I say fell off, I mean hard, like off the rift hard, as in Urf-getting-eaten-and-turned-into-a-limited-run-skin-by-Warwick-hard. But with patch 4.10,
Maokai got some much needed love from Rito, and here we are.
Since the patch
Maokai was gifted 2 major changes to his kit. Firstly, saplings now slow after detonation which is HUGE. Now you can use them to block off enemy escape routes when you gank. Secondly,
his ult is now centered around him instead of free moving like
Anivia's, which means that you can do a much better job of peeling for your carries and keeping them alive. On top of this,
Spirit of the Ancient Golem got reworked and it makes
Maokai's life soooooooooo much easier.
Because of all these recent changes,
Maokai is able to be the crazy gank happy monster that we all knew and hated in season 2.
As of 4.12 a couple Challenger Tier players have begun playing
Maokai at top lane, as a kind of response to the rise of
Gragas in NA and
Renekton in KR. I've actually started playing him at top lane myself, and I've found him to be
very strong. If you're not playing
Maokai, or at least learning to, you're wasting a chance to get some freelo.
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Pros
+Silly amount of cc output
+Great durability and sustain
+Massive burst for a tank
+Built in camo |
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Cons
-Few offensive build options
-Lacks an AOE initiation
-No reliable smite combo
-Hasn't gotten to full meta at top lane |
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In case you can't tell, this section is split up based on the two styles I cover in my guide. You can read one, both, or neither, all you have to do is click on the drop down tab... or don't
(but really please do I worked hard).
Objective Control Build
This is pretty much TheeOddOne's season 2 rune set for
Maokai, and all credit goes to him for designing it. Originally, the 3 AP Quints were used for
Maokai to solo clear wraiths while his team started blue buff, but this was back when small camps spawned at 1:40 and you could do crazy nonsense like that. In season 4, taking AP Quints means one thing, OBJECTIVE DOMINANCE. As I stated above,
Maokai has a bit of a hard time controlling objectives, he lacks a good way to combo damage with his smite in the same way that
Cho'Gath or
Elise can. In order to counteract this, you take 3 AP Quints instead of 3 Movement Speed Quints to push up your damage
Threshhold (see what I did there hehehe). The bonus AP also makes your first clear a lot a lot a lot faster.
Bonus AP = stronger spells
Bonus AP = better objective securing
Gank Heavy Build
This is a modified version of TheOddOne's season 2 rune set, and what I personally prefer to use. The only difference with his setup is that I take movement quints instead of flat ability power. Since you're not power clearing wraiths/wolves while your team sets up blue for you anymore you don't
need the extra AP. Additionally, your saplings now get faster when you do, so having movement runes makes it easier for you to proc the slow on enemy champions. I think that in the current meta, having movement speed on a gank heavy jungler is about the best thing you could do. If there was a way for me to build
talisman of ascension on my junglers right now (Ã la Shurelya's Reverie from season 2) I would.
Bonus move speed = faster saplings...
Bonus move speed = win
AP Bruiser Top Lane Build
This is something new that's come out of NA/KR Challenger Tier in the past couple of weeks. I wanted to experiment with it myself before I released any content discussing it in my guide, and I've found the pick to be very strong.
The basic idea behind this rune set is that you get just enough durability from mixed Armor/HP seals to survive against the bruiser meta, and then devote the rest of your runes to late game damage. Down in the ability section I discuss
Maokai's skills more in depth, but the basic idea is that 4.12 greatly reduced
Maokai's mana costs, which makes it really easy for him to safely trade with other top lane champions, so long as he has some AP and MPen.
These are basically the same runes you would expect to see on
Rumble or
Gragas top lane, and they're pretty ubiquitous for high level top laners. The set up gives you great scaling around the 15 minute mark, provided you didn't get absolutely stomped in lane.
Now for some general stuff... The attack speed helps you get more passive procs off in teamfights - you should generate about 1k hp from this per fight - and makes it easier for you to clear your camps. Full armor is still better for junglers even after the nerfs, and the scaling magic resist makes up for how little you get from your build.
Mastery Explanation (JUNGLE)
These masteries are pretty standard for utility tank junglers. Because of his passive
Maokai uses perseverance and second wind better than a lot of other tanks. You take fleet of foot over mana regen because it makes ganking easier, and again, makes your saplings faster.
I wanted to highlight why the Masteries for the two jungle builds are a little bit different while we're on the subject. I prefer to take
Bladed Armor
on the Objective control build because it synergizes so well with
Quill Coat/
Spirit of the Ancient Golem for clearing buffs and objectives efficiently. I recognize that
Oppression
is a stronger choice 99% of the time (that's why I take it on the Gank heavy build), but there really are games where you're going to be better off trying to farm out 1-2 extra camps and controlling your jungle then trying to bully
every lane all the time. Most of the time, your going to be able to know if it's that kind of game or not in champ select.
Ganking =
Oppression
Jungle control =
Bladed Armor
I don't recommend taking 9-21-0 or 21-9-0 masteries because
Maokai has to dive the enemy ADC or peel for his own. He doesn't really try to kill anyone in fights.
Mastery Explanation (TOP LANE)
These masteries are pretty unique to "Top-Kai," they're focused on abusing his innate tankiness, as well as (please burn me if this isn't true anymore) how he has the highest innate AD at lv1. Rather than going for the typical AP & AP/Level that other AP top laners go, "Top-Kai" benefits more from the bonus AD & AD/Level because it makes it much easier for him to farm and trade against other top laners. The other added benefit to this setup is that your
Iceborn Gauntlet gains a little more AOE damage since it scales off of your AD not your AP. Other than that, the 21 points in defense have the jungle mastery swapped out for
Recovery
since it helps you stay in lane longer.
Unlike with Jungle-Kai, you
are trying to kill enemy champions in fights because you have the %HP damage to actually pull it off.
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I had originally forgotten to put this section in, but the wonderful
Emikadon saw the error of my ways. So here it is Poro-ites, an ability chapter! Thankfully this is the same for both versions of
Maokai so this section is going to be nice and short.
innate: SAP MAGIC
This is
Maokai's innate ability, and is one of the best in the game for utility based tanks. Every time a champion (friendly, enemy, or
Maokai) casts a spell near
Maokai, he gains a charge of
Sap Magic. At 5 charges, his next basic attack against an organic target (champions, minions, monsters, pets) will instantly restore 7% of
Maokai's max hp. This is why hp stacking is just so filthy good on
Maokai, and why attack speed runes mean that you have crazy sustain in teamfights. TheOddOne explains this better, but pretty much in teamfights everyone is gonna spam skills, enough that you're gonna get to 5 charges really fast. Since you can't overcharge your passive, you have to auto attack pretty fast to get all the heals. So more attack speed = more
Maokai heals.
Q: Arcane Smash
arcane smash
This is your bread and butter cc skill as
Maokai, its a two piece ability, the first is a linear skill shot that deals damage and slows enemies it contacts. The second piece is a melee range AOE knockback centered around
Maokai that deals damage to all enemies hit. Its important to note that hitting an enemy with both the AOE and linear skillshot won't proc double damage, you only get hurt once. The skill is low low low in mana cost, and has a pretty low cd as well. The damage is pretty good, even if the AP ratios are trash.
W: twisted advance
This is probably the single best click to target spell in the game (as far as standard non-ultimate abilities go). It does %hp damage, has a scaling cd, huge snare duration, and is able to pull
Maokai over walls to the target (use at your own risk). I think its just a great ability overall, and learning to time it correctly is really key for good
Maokai play.
One thing I forgot to include in earlier versions of the guide is that
Twisted Advance drops turret aggro. Other than just using your W to gap close on enemies, you can also use it to execute very early tower dives, much like
Elise or
Fizz. This is especially useful if you're in call with the jungler.
E: sapling toss
This skill is okay. I mostly use it to set up early level ganks when towers are still up (see the strategy tab), and to use as a long range ward since the saplings grant vision when they drop. They have a longer toss range than sight ward so it lets
Maokai be reaaaaaally safe when going to clear the jungle.
In top lane this skill gets A LOT more impactful. Instead of having to waste 75g on a ward every time you back, you're able to abuse your E and trinket for the free vision in both tri-brushes, and in river. And yes, you can and SHOULD still buy wards. Having your E means that you can get much better vision control of your area than the enemy... Unless that enemy is
Teemo... Hate that little fuzzball.
R: vengeful maelstrom
YES YES YES YES YES. This ultimate is amazing. Now that the Rito Overlords have made the maelstrom stay centered around
Maokai (instead of a drop and run like
Glacial Storm) it is one of the single best team fighting abilities in the game. Reduces non-turret damage to friendly champions? Check. Stores damage dealt (up to a cap) to unleash back at enemies? Check. Looks awesome? Yesh.
This. Ability. Is. Awesome.
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Even after the patch 4.11 changes to
Maokai's
Twisted Advance its still really good for him to go for maxing
arcane smash first. This is mostly because it is a reliable source of low cd, AOE damage to help with clearing the jungle and making impactful ganks.
You level arcane smash over Twisted Advance because they both have their place at different points in the game. This leveling pattern accommodates that.
Now I've been having a couple people ask me about tricks of the trade for
Maokai, so I'm going to put those in the tabs below. This tab will contain tips related to utilizing his abilities correctly,
not the strategy of ganking as
Maokai. That kind of advice is in the
Strategy Chapter and I highly recommend reading it all.
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tricks for smiting with Maokai
- To Smite properly with Maokai you have to be able to properly time 2 skills with your smite, unlike some other champions who are popular in the meta. You need to lead with your arcane smash, follow up immediately with Twisted Advance, and hit your Smite at the exact time your Twisted Advance lands. I know it's a lot, but it's important, and here's why:
Maokai's Twisted Advance does %max hp damage to a single target, and is currently not restricted to a flat amount against monsters. That means you can take a big chunk out of Baron with this skill.. The reason you throw in your arcane smash to the combo is that the missile speed is close to the speed that Maokai travels during Twisted Advance, and it doesn't disrupt his ability to use the latter skill. It's the easiest skill to combo with your Twisted Advance, and so we add it in.
- This is a separate bullet if only because the combo Smite technique is not unique to Maokai. Plenty of other champions use a high burst ability to guarantee a good Smite, and it's all about learning how long it takes for the champion ability to go off. Smite is instant, so as long a you learn the timing for each champion it's pretty easy. After you get the QW combo down for Maokai you just have to work on timing it with Smite. Do all this and you can potentially get around 1700+ (I haven't done the math yet so don't murder me please) damage onto Baron or Dragon. That's a really good thing.
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On a closing note,
Maokai has a pretty cheap harass combo when playing top lane. You really want to have good vision if you plan on doing this because it does use both your
arcane smash and your
Twisted Advance, leaving you really vulnerable to ganks.
The combo is: AA -> E&W -> Q (towards your tower, usually) -> AA. It's important to note that you use your Sapling Toss as you blink to the enemy with Twisted Advance. If you do it right they should get hit with the landing damage and the explosive damage from your sapling. This actually increases your trading power a ton, and makes the skill way more mana efficient.
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This section is collapsed completely into tabs because its
really long. I mean, it would be really cruel of me to make you guys scroll through all of this crazy in depth explanation just to get to the strategy section. As with Runes & Masteries, I split up the chapter into the two
Maokai styles that my guide is here to explain.
Objective Control Build
This is pretty much the standard item start for all junglers. Since the new
Quill Coat gives you a 120s ward on your first back, you can take
Sweeping Lens on tank utility junglers.
You want to try and get these items by the time the first tower kill/dragon fight happens.
Quill Coat and boots of mobility help you control the map very easily, and give you a greater ability to farm or gank depending on how your laners are faring. Aegis of the legion and glacial shroud give you a good balance of stats and build into your two most important items, locket of the iron solari, and frozen heart. You can usually force towers and dive once you have these.
The order you get these items is really dependent on the game you're playing. If you find yourself farming a lot (hopefully you don't) then you can upgrade your
Quill Coat before locket or frozen heart. If you're ganking or team fighting more you'll want one of your aura items first.
Maokai is mostly designed to stick by his carries and help them survive fights, so building big aura items is a pretty good way to win games.
Spirit Visage is the only selfish item that I recommend (JK I just figured out how great
Warmog's Armor is), mostly because of how crazy good it goes with your passive. Your last item can be either a
Warmog's Armor, or an
Abyssal Mask. I JUST CHANGED THIS PART. After I took the 25% bonus hp increase from
Spirit of the Ancient Golem into account,
Warmog's Armor is brutally efficient. Now with the health stats alone,
Warmog's Armor would cost you 3333g (based on the 400g you spend for a 150hp
Ruby Crystal), yet you get the bonus health for 500g cheaper than you should. On top of that, you get a great passive that gives you amazing sustain in teamfights and sieging. I think that
Abyssal Mask is still really good as an offensive build option (seeing as there really are no good ones on
Maokai), because it acts more as a buff for your team than a buff to you. I would probably go for
Warmog's Armor in most of my games now that I see how good it is, but
Abyssal Mask is still nice.
Gank Heavy Build
Okay, okay, you're gonna wanna burn me for this one. I recommend taking
Stealth Ward just as much as I recommend
Sweeping Lens. Now you're all saying, "BUT POROOOOO, HOW CAN YOU SAY BOTH ARE GOOD?!?" Well here's how Poro-ites, HERE'S HOW! The
Sweeping Lens start is great if your goal is to remove enemy vision from river bushes so that you can run around and steal buffs. However, if you want to gank and/or collapse on the enemy jungler at their camps, having the ward from
Quill Coatand the ward from the
Stealth Ward makes your life that much easier. If you take the
Stealth Ward I highly recommend upgrading it instead of selling for a
Sweeping Lens later on because vision still for a lot, and being able to put out 2/3 wards for free is crazy good for setting up picks.
This is where there is the biggest difference between my two builds. These items are all about getting you cheap, gold efficient stats, while the other build path is about going for late game team fighting. In this build path you finish your
Spirit of the Ancient Golem immediately after your
Mobility Boots, rather than keep it as a
Quill Coat. The explanation for that is really long and so I put it here:.
OMG PORO! A SUBSECTION WITHIN A SUBSECTION!
The biggest reason rush the legendary upgrade is that it
passively increases your bonus hp by 25%. Let that sink in for a second, that means for every 100 hp you build, you get 125 instead. It is essentially a
Rabadon's Deathcap for your hp bar. That alone is a reason enough to rush the item (like Rab's does for AP, it makes every other hp item you buy more gold efficient), but on top of that it still has the conservation passive attached to it. That secondary passive is the main reason I want to talk about building a legendary so early on a jungler.
When you spend most of your time in a game ganking instead of positioning for and securing objectives, you want to pretty much ignore all of your jungle camps except for wolves, wraiths, and your buffs when they spawn. The conservation passive was designed around this idea (bless the Rito overlords for helping us lowly junglers) granting players a bonus up to 40g for a big monster kill, provided that they waited long enough for the passive to stack up. When you want to ignore your jungle for as long as possible in order to help out your lanes, getting an extra 40g (roughly equivalent to the duo golems camp in gold) every time you clear the 2 camps you care about is a huge bonus. Conservation still helps you when you're going for objective control, but it's not going to be felt as much when you are killing a camp a minute.
Warden's Mail is one of those item's that has always been really efficient for any tank to buy, and its no different on
Maokai. 50 armor and anyone who attacks you has their attack speed slowed by 10%, and all for just 1k?!? Yep, buying that.
Negatron Cloak, still a really efficient item. The main reason you buy this one instead of a
Giant's Belt is that it helps round out your resistance pool, meaning you won't die diving towers just because the enemy
Veigar has a BAJILLION AP.
I think if you've hung on with me for this long then you'll be able to understand these last couple of items in the build. The only difference between this build path and the last one is that I put a
Randuin's Omen in instead of the
Frozen Heart. This is mostly because rushing it after your
Negatron Cloak gives you enough effective hp (how much damage it actually takes to kill you after resistance calculations) to dive towers and not really care too much, it does give you 625 hp after
Spirit of the Ancient Golem's passive is factored in. Also,
Randuin's Omen gives you a nice active slow to make it that much harder for the enemy to run from you. You delay your
Locket of the Iron Solari in this build because its all about snowballing one or two lanes instead of rushing the game to teamfights and dancing around Baron, and I just showed the
Abyssal Mask on this path for posterity; as I had previously stated above, you pick either
Abyssal Mask or
Warmog's Armor depending on the game is going.
AP Bruiser Top Build
When you play Top-Kai, you're going to want to start with
Doran's Ring and 2x
Health Potion because of how massive they make your sustain. Even though your base AP ratios aren't that great, the +15AP helps you out in your early game, especially since your first real item is
catalyst the protector. Other than that, the bonus HP helps you sustain with your
Sap Magic, and the 3 mana/5 seconds makes it a lot easier for you to stay in lane when you're spamming Q and trading. The passive on
Doran's Ring is also amazing on
Maokai because you can usually just kill a weakened caster minion with a single Q cast (this basically makes your Q cost 1/3 less mana if you kill 3+ minions). The
Stealth Ward should be pretty self explanatory.
Your core items into mid game are
Rod of Ages,
Sorcerer's Shoes, and
Sheen. The theory behind this is as follows:
- Maokai is able to trade most bruisers efficiently pre level 6 because of the sustain from Sap Magic, and the %hp damage from Twisted Advance. Once you have access to Vengeful Maelstrom,this is even more pronounced, due mainly to the fact that the %damage reduction is equivalent to roughly 30-60 of each resistance stat (depending on how much Armor and MR you already have), and the more damage you tank, the more damage you can put back when you cancel the ultimate. Except for lanes where you're extremely behind, Maokai doesn't need any bonus Armor or MR to trade his lane opponent as long as he's stacking HP.
- Rod of Ages grants bonus HP, AP, and mana for every minute that you've had it after purchase. Assuming you can purchase it before 16 minutes, Rod of Ages + Vengeful Maelstrom + Sap Magic gives Maokai extremely high durability. If you manage to build your Rod of Ages in 12 minutes or less, Maokai becomes oppressive to the point that he can 3v1 Top, Mid, and Jungle and come out with at least 1-2 kills (I've already done this 4 times in the games I've been testing him).
- Sorcerer's Shoes are an ideal purchase for Maokai after he has a well timed RoA because he doesn't (or at least shouldn't)) need any defensive stats to win skirmishes, and it greatly amplifies Maokai's high burst potential.
- Sheen allows you to further abuse enemy champions during your standard combo, which should generate at least 2 spellblade procs. Furthermore, having Sheen allows you to take advantage of your high innate AD to take down towers. And increases the amount of mixed damage that you do.
I will say that there are times where going for a
Spectre's Cowl or
Glacial Shroud before
Sheen is preferable, but for the most part you want to try and take advantage of
Maokai's innate durability before other champions have the Armor and MPen to 100-0 you. Additionally, I would choose
Ninja Tabi in lanes where the enemy is likely going to build a
Blade of the Ruined King, because the 8% HP damage is somewhat overwhelming when you go for a RoA, even when you have your
Vengeful Maelstrom active. I'm not as much of a fan for trading
Sorcerer's Shoes for
Mercury's Treads, simply because you want the enemy to focus you with ganks and cc in teamfights. You already have tenacity from your Masteries, so if the enemy blows everything on you and you die, chances are your team will get the cleanup.
Adding to that, Vengeful Maelstrom will proc damage even after Maokai dies, which means having the extra MPen is usually going to help your team win the fight if you have to suicide bomb the enemy back line.
For those of you who have read any of the Jungling sections probably won't be surprised by the end game build displayed here.
Iceborn Gauntlet is the best
Sheen build for tanks, and let's
maokai] put out even more cc than he already does. Even though it's a gold suck in the jungle, you should be farmed enough to afford it comfortably in lane. [[spirit visage makes your
Sap Magic restore 8.4% max hp instead of 7%, and this adds up during fight. The defensive stats and cdr are also very efficient on tanks.
Randuin's Omen is a very efficient item on
Maokai if you plan on executing dives during the late game, and the active ability also makes it near impossible for anyone to touch your carries if you do your job.
Abyssal Mask is a great late game item for any AP Bruiser because it massively turns the balance of magic damage in teamfights. On
Maokai this effect synergizes even better with
Vengeful Maelstrom, as you can effectively cause a ~40% change in your frontline's effective HP (your ult increases your allies' effective HP by 20%, and depending on the game the 20MR reduction aura from
Abyssal Mask can reduce enemy effective HP by 10-40%). This makes
Abyssal Mask very very cost efficient on
Maokai.
A word on
Rod of Ages:
As I said in the theory breakdown above, getting your RoA before 16 minutes is critical to making it cost efficient on
Maokai.
At 2800g,
Rod of Ages has a similar cost to
Rylai's Crystal Scepter. If you can purchase a 12-16 minute RoA, you will have max stats (80 AP, 650 HP, and 650 Mana) by 22-26 minutes. Of that 10 minute charge time, most will likely be spent on upgraded boots and a
Sheen, in the midst of mid game skirmishing.
By comparison, a
Warden's Mail and
Spectre's Cowl cost 2400g, grant you ~300-400hp against mixed damage sources, and put you on track for two of your other core items. More importantly, If you can finish at least
Randuin's Omen or
Spirit Visage by 20 minutes you're going to be significantly stronger than if you had an 16 minute + RoA. Simply because the passive components of both items out class a late scaling
Rod of Ages.
The bottom line is if you're not going to finish RoA on time, take the catalyst components and build your other items.
The important thing to note about items is that they are completely situational. I've found these build paths to work for me in the majority of games, but if the enemy does something crazy like 3 marksmen, you can probably skip getting a
Locket of the Iron Solari and other MR items. Knowing what to build takes practice, so use this guide as a starting point to learn from
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I'm going to be talking about a few different things in this section. Planning, ganking properly as
Maokai, and Baron/Dragon calls. I will go pretty in depth into all of them so be warned.
A STORY ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF PLANNING
The first thing you need to know about Jungling is that you need to know your plan before you get into game. However, I don't mean you need to adhere to it religiously. Good junglers know how to respond to the enemy (or heaven forbid your team) messing with their designs. They also have a backup plan or two for common problems in solo queue. Players who are new to the jungle will often waste a lot of time reacting rather than responding, they get messed with, and then they just shut down. Let me explain what I mean here.
I recently played a game on red side where I wanted to start at use buff and work my way to top lane. The enemy team had a low cc composition so I wasn't expecting an invade. My mid laner wasn't watching the small river bush, and we had no wards out. The enemy team invaded my buff, killed me, blew my flash, and took my buff.
A lot of players would have given up or just receded into the jungle to farm up. I respawned at 2:07 so I knew that the enemy jungler should have been starting his red buff. Because of this I decided to invade the enemy blue buff instead of going for my red buff, even though I knew I would be uncontested. I had my mid laner shove to Tower and we moved to take their blue. My decision paid off, their jungler went for a gank on bot lane because he had double buffs, meanwhile I got blue uncontested. Since we had just won a little advantage (since their gank failed and we got the buff), I told my mid to follow me up to top lane and forced a 3v1. My mid picked up the kill and then carried the game.
Had I reacted to the invade I probably would've stayed well behind the enemy jungler, and ended up losing. Instead, I had a plan for what to do if I was invaded at the first buff, and because of it, I was able to respond appropriately to the invade. You always need a game plan for where you're ganking first, and then backup plans for enemy invades, your laner or you dying early, and so forth. Having these plans in place for every game will elevate your gameplay so much it's not even funny.
GANKING WITH MAOKAI
Maokai is a bit different from other junglers in how he ganks, so I want to devote some space to talking about it. When you go for your first gank you should have all 3 of your skills available, unless something catastrophic happened and you're still at level 2. Here's the quick and dirty guide.
- Time your gank so that you come in after the minion waves start fighting, and well before the next wave comes up.
- You want to come in behind the enemy laner, because if you try to run at them they're going to get away from you 9/10 times.
- Now you throw a sapling well behind their minions (usually 3-4 champion body lengths off of their tower). Since they slow on detonation now, the sapling will cut off the enemy escape if they make it last you and your laner.
- Walk up to them and hit your Q towards your tower. This knocks the enemy back towards your teammate, and makes it harder for them to escape.
- Auto attack them as you chase them to proc red buff slows.
- Once they get low enough to execute, once they aggro your sapling, or once they flash, root them in place with your W.
- If you haven't killed them by now, cast Q again since it should be off cd.
- Spam laugh as you tax your laner.
I know it sounds like a lot but this is a really easy way to guarantee a kill on top lane, or mid if you're feeling ballsy enough to try it. As long as you don't use your W,your only gap closer, as an initiate (THE BIGGEST MISTAKE BAD JUNGLERS MAKE) you shouldn't have a problem securing a kill. Using your W after your force their flash keeps you from needing to flash to hit the second Q. The second thing is keep yourself in between the enemy and their tower. If they have an escape or flash it guarantees that the farthest they can get is just to the otherwise of you, and not actually away from you. Doing these things will make you a much better
Maokai player, and can be carried over to other junglers with good gap closing skills.
BARON AND DRAGON CALLS
Arguably the most important thing for junglers to do well is control Baron and Dragon. A lot of people get this wrong so I want to clear some things up.
First off, BARON LOSES MORE SOLO QUEUE GAMES THAN IT WINS. Now I say this because a lot of teams will try to force Baron when they don't have a big enough advantage to secure it. Conversely, a lot of teams will avoid taking Baron and then make a futile push down mid because they don't understand how big if an advantage they have. Understanding when to Baron is critical to winning games.
WHEN TO BARON
A lot of understand when to go for Baron is about experience, no matter how well I explain this part, someone is gonna mess it up because they don't have as much experience in the jungle. That being said, there are a couple big things to watch for.
- Does your team have more members alive (and with enough hp to Baron) than the other team?
- Is the enemy jungler dead
- Is yours alive?
- Is the enemy team's main damage source on bot lane/at base?
- Is yours with you?
If the answer to 3 or more of these questions yes? Then you should probably try to force Baron. You can actually pull off many more good Baron calls by following this formula than you would without it. There's still a matter of how much you understand the enemy team's stealing abilities/how well you can smite combo, as well as a whole bunch of team comp issues, but this should give you an idea of how it works. The only big difference between doing Baron and doing Dragon is that a lot of characters can just solo dragon after 10 minutes in.
CONTROLLING OBJECTIVES
Now that you know when you should generally be looking for Baron and Dragon, you need to know how to properly control then throughout the game. The first thing to note is that it's much more important to ward Dragon heavily than Baron. Your bot lane will probably cause a lot of action early on, and you should focus most of your ganks there after one successful gank to each solo lane. Having wards around Dragon side jungle helps with these ganks immensely. Secondly, Baron doesn't spawn until 15 minutes, so you have most of the game not worrying about protecting it. Thirdly, top lane is pretty much just a farm fear right now, so you really shouldn't have to know what's going on there out past the river bush. As long as you pink the small brush in top side river, you will have more than enough vision to see any Baron push.
Top-Kai tactics
So this is probably going to be the most important part of this guide for anyone trying
Maokai out at top lane.
The basic idea here is that you're an AP champion who naturally supplements their survivability without major defensive items. For anyone who's played
Swain,
Singed, or
Gragas, this should sound very familiar to you.
As long as you utilize your harass combo (detailed in the abilities section) properly, and
always use
Vengeful Maelstrom when engaging/escaping, it is very hard for anyone to push you out of lane without heavy jungle pressure.
You should try to use your AA's as much as possible to farm.
Maokai has great base AD, so you shouldn't have problems farming early on like
Rumble and
Vladimir. You generally want to avoid using your
arcane smash on minions until you have
catalyst the protector and 2x
Doran's Rings or better, simply because you want to recoup the 45 mana cost by killing the minions. The only exception I have to this is when you're actively trying to force the lane to tower.
You should always be looking for teleport plays with Top-Kai because of how deadly your kit is during early game skirmishes. The same power that let's you 3v1 with just a RoA also means you win 2v3s, 3v3s, and sometimes 4v3s. Additionally,
Maokai's cheap AOE and low cd's makes him a very effective split pusher once he has
Sheen/
Iceborn Gauntlet, especially since you're so hard to kill 1v1.
I will update this section with videos and such later on, at the moment I just don't have the programs to record examples of anything, SORRY!
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Thanks for reading my guide in
Maokai, The Twisted Treant! If you have any questions you can PM me on either League or Mobafire. Don't forget to comment and vote.
Its been one heck of a ride Mobafire, thanks for all the support. Poro out.
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v1.0
I recognize that there is a bug with Mobafire displaying some of the items in the items chapter, I have notified Mobafire's support and am awaiting a fix to the issue.
v1.1
I still haven't been able to fix the issue with the item sets being displayed properly. I updated the skill order to better reflect Maokai's needs as a peeling focused tank jungler.
v1.2
Shoutout to Janitsu for showing me what was wrong with my items section. I altered the code and everything renders properly. Currently testing to see if I like Abyssal Mask over Iceborn Gauntlet as the default end item in my build. v2.0 UPDATES SOON
v2.0 - 07/10/14
FIRST MAJOR UPDATE TODAY!!! I want to make a big shout out to all of the wonderful people who've read my guide over the past week, and put me on the front page of Mobafire. Next I want to say I hope everyone enjoys the new, more streamlined appearance of the guide, this took about 3 hours to update completely and work it to how I wanted, so I'm pretty proud.
v2.1 - 07/10/14
I reworked the masteries and items sections as per Joxuu's suggestions. Still testing out the different build paths to see if there's anything that I feel needs reworking.
v2.2 - 07/10/14
Added the abilities chapter to the build, adding cutesy pictures on the next build.
v2.3 - 07/11/14
Added tips and tricks to the abilities chapter, reworked some of the tabs (information and placement), and added some graphical whimsy.
v3.0 - 07/12/14
Reworked entire guide into one chapter to use a customs table of contents. I will be updating the table of contents again soon.
v4.0 - 07/12/14
Added the build and discussion for playing Top-Kai in post 4.13. Corrected some minor grammatical errors I located in the item's section.
v4.1 - 08/13/14
Clarified a discrepancy between the cheat sheet Masteries and the actual guide. This is under the "Mastery Explanation (Jungle)" tab.
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Enter the jungle, leave the wood 5 / Revised for top lane
Build Guide By The Pink Poro
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