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Maokai the Twisted Treant
Introduction
Maokai is a caster-tank, quite similar to the likes of ChoGath and Galio. He uses his innate beefiness in order to maximize his disruptive potential. He contributes 2 cc: a spammable AoE slow, and a very reliable root that also blinks maokai to the target. His ulti is also extremely useful in a teamfight because it gives 20% damage reduction your whole team, if placed correctly, and it does a great deal of AoE damage to boot. His passive also makes him impossible to kill later on. He is quite underrated by most players.
Abilities
[Q] Arcane Smash – Slight knockback + slow
Magic Damage: 70 / 115 / 160 / 205 / 250 (+0.4 per Ability Power)
Slow: 20 / 27 / 34 / 41 / 48 %
Cost: 55 mana
Cooldown: 6 seconds
Range: 700
Comments: + Show Spoiler +It’s cheap, the cooldown is low, and once you max it, it becomes a huge amount of slow. The knockback is minor but it’s not irrelevant. I do believe the knockback creates a ministun that stops channeling and stops the usage of abilities and attacks by a fraction of a second.
[W] Twisted Advance – Root
Magic Damage: 80 / 115 / 150 / 185 / 220 (+0.8 per Ability Power)
Root Duration: 1 / 1.25 / 1.5 / 1.75 / 2 seconds
Cost: 75 / 80 / 85 / 90 / 95 Mana
Cooldown: 13 seconds
Range: 650
Comments:+ Show Spoiler + Maokai’s hard-cc. It’s a point-and-click cc, extremely reliable.
[E] Sapling Toss – Spidermines
Impact Magic Damage: 40 / 75 / 110 / 145 / 180 (+0.4 per Ability Power)
Explosion Magic Damage: 80 / 130 / 180 / 230 / 280 (+0.6 per Ability Power)
Cost: 70 / 80 / 90 / 100 / 110 Mana
Cooldown: 12 seconds
Range: 1100
Explosion Area of Effect: 350 (estimate)
Chase Aggro: 250 (estimate)
Sight Range: 700 (estimate)
Comments: + Show Spoiler +Maokai’s best skill. Just like spidermines, these things do ridiculous amounts of damage and are VERY annoying. When this skill is maxed, it does 460 (!) base damage. It also has a 1:1 AP ratio. Oh, and you can stack a couple of them for lulzy ambush. They’re NOT replacement for wards. They give good vision but they don’t last long enough at all.
[R] Vengeful Maelstrom: It’s a Toggle AoE like Anivia’s ult. Creates an area that reduces all damage to team (except tower damage) by 20% and deals damage once you toggle it off.
Magic Damage: 100 / 150 / 200 (+0.5 per Ability Power)(+2 bonus damage per damage absorbed)
Maximum Bonus Damage: 200 / 250 / 300
Cooldown: 40 / 30 / 20 seconds.
Initial Cost: 75 mana.
Upkeep Cost: 30 mana.
Range: 575.
Comments: + Show Spoiler +You basically get the EHP equivalent of an extra champion with this ulti (assuming everyone faught until they died that is  ). The cooldown is low, especially at level 3, and the damage is very high. The AoE is so big that it’s pretty hard to NOT fight in this thing.
Passive: “Each time a champion near Maokai casts a spell, he gains a charge of Magical Sap. When he has 5 charges, his next melee attack will drain energy from his target, healing Maokai for 7.5 % of his maximum health”
Comments:+ Show Spoiler + It’s a powerful passive, to say the least. It provides maokai with lanestaying power, but it really shines in teamfights since everyone is spamming spells around you, making Maokai impossible to kill. Maokai’s own skills charges this passive.
Summoner Spells:
Ghost + Ignite. + Show Spoiler +Ghost for chase + getting close enough to use root. Ignite for a ridiculous early -> midgame burst.Teleport can be better than ignite in arranged teams, so you can pull off stunts like stealing half the enemy jungle at the start or getting easy dragons.
Masteries:
9/0/21
+ Show Spoiler +Pretty standard I think. Maokai doesn’t need SoS. He’s definitely going to run oom before he runs out of health so who cares. The combined 9% cdr is pretty useful.
Runes:
Quints: Movement speed x 3.+ Show Spoiler + Having a slightly higher movement speed is always useful for a champion like maokai, since frequently you only need to be slightly faster than your target to catch up and root a target, netting you the kill. 4.5% extra movespeed brings his pathetic 305 base movespeed to a sexy 318. Add to that the 3% from the utility tree and you start out with 328 movespeed.
Marks: Magic pen x 9
Seals and Glyphs: Magic Resistance per level x 9. + Show Spoiler +I use magic resistance per level on both seals and glyphs. This nets him an extra 40 MR at level 18. This is because of my item choices, which will not allow for too many big-ticket MR items.
But he’ll run out of mana if you don’t use MP5 runes!”.+ Show Spoiler + Actually he is going to run oom either way. Stacking your entire runeslots with mp5 runes will delay his oomness by maybe 2 creepwaves, which is pretty pointless since everytime he goes back he buys more mana or mp5 items anyways, so your net gain isn’t all that much.
Skilling Order:
E,Q,E,W,E,R, then R>E>Q>W
“Why you no level W over Q? Root duration is powerful!”. + Show Spoiler +Sure, having 1 extra second of root sounds great, but the damage increase is pitiful, and the cooldown on W is way too long to be worth it. Leveling Q brings the pathetic 23% slow to a beastly 48% slow. The cooldown low enough that you can fire 2 of them off in a trade.
“Why you take Q and not W at level 2!?”+ Show Spoiler + Mostly because it’s a little too early to use W without getting your face stuffed in after your root wears off. The damage isn’t really that impressive and the ridiculous scaling on your E hasn’t kicked in yet. Plus, at level 3, E + Q kills all three ranged minions. Last-hitting the ranged minions is usually difficult for melee champs. Having a way to get all of them early on is very good for your cs.
“Why level R? You still only get 20% damage reduction?!” + Show Spoiler +For 1 point you still end up getting at least an extra 50 damage on your burst, or an extra 100 potential damage in a teamfight in a huge AoE blast. Also, the cooldown is reduced by 10 seconds. The mana cost doesn’t go up, so why not?
Item build:
Dring
Dring
Dring
Merc Treads
Spirit visage/Glacial Shroud (in whichever order you need more, then finish the other one)
Frozen heart
+ Show Spoiler +For a final itembuild that costs 7k gold, you get a total of 45AP, 2.5k HP, 200armor, and around 125MR and 39% cdr.. With your passive and ultimate they really won’t be able to kill you. Meanwhile you’re spamming a 50% slow on a 3.6second cooldown pretending to be nunu and rooting people every 7 seconds.
The itembuild is very fluid so have to make adjustments based on:
- Whether you can control both team’s blue buffs
- Whether anyone else on your team needs blue buff
- Whether anyone on your team will be building soul shroud
Depending whether you can get cdr from blue buff or soul shroud, ditch spirit visage for catalyst and then build it into banshees. Do NOT build catalyst before 3drings. The 45AP from the drings is very powerful on maokai and will help him burst his opponent senseless.
Maokai gameplay
Before minion spawn: Start the game with doran’s rings. If your team is up for it, 5-man invade the enemy’s red buff. You can jack the wraiths with 2 + 1 saplings while your team takes the red buff. Leaving the enemy jungler with half a jungle to work with. Use your own judgment whether you want to jack their wraiths like this, however. Maokai really doesn’t use a whole lot of mana the first two levels, so even if you use 3 saplings on the wraiths you will regen enough mana by level 3 to farm the ranged minions, and the exp from wraith generally will make up for it.
Laning: Take a solo lane. Solotop would be ideal. Solomid can work too. Levels 1-2 just try to last hit as best as you can without eating too much harass. Toss a couple of sapling at the enemy if you have mana to spare but avoid pushing the lane too hard; your time will come.
At level 3, toss E into ranged minions and then Q. This gets you 3 cs everytime, allowing you to farm comfortably against anyone really. Melee minions are much easier to farm as well. After a couple of waves you probably pushed up to the enemy tower and are low on mana. Recall to buy another doran’s ring.
Once you are level 5 you can really start beating on your opponent if they overextend. Get in range, toss an E directly at your opponent, and then root them in place. Your sapling will be guaranteed to hit them + explode in their face. This does a LOT of damage. If they’re standing back, E + Q to kill the ranged minions, wait for E to come off cooldown, and then toss another E at them; they won’t have ranged minions to attact the attention of the derplings so they’ll have no choice but to run around and be denied a LOT of farm.
Once you hit level 7 that’s when maokai becomes ridiculous. Sapling will 1-shot ranged creeps, so you just 1-shot ranged creeps and then zone them completely with another sapling. If they dare to come farm, nuke the shit out of them with E + W + Q. You also have ignite to let you get a kill.
Remember, Maokai’s “thing” is to push his tower 24/7. This isn’t a bad thing for him because he can continue to harass and deny last hits even after he pushes the wave, and it frees up a lot of time for him to gank or buy + get mana back.
Midgame:
Your saplings are a great poking/seige tool. You can toss them as much as you want, since unlike Cho Gath, using your skills to poke doesn’t make you use up valuable cc.
Saplings can be stacked in a brush for ambushing. You can basically 1-shot someone if they walk into 3 saplings + all your skills + ignite.
I will update this section a little more later on.
In teamfights
PLACE YOUR ULT PROPERLY. I.e. place it before all the damage is being dealt, but after forcing commitment from the enemy team.
Spam your Q. It’s a wonderful slow. Use W to help you position your Q to hit multiple people.
Saplings still deals good damage. Toss it at their squishies and then burst them down when they get low enough.
Don’t go off chasing after their carry right from the start. You’re a tanky caster, not a tanky DPS so you lack sustained damage. Only jump on their carry once they’re low enough to be bursted. Until then, just be a good cc-bot for your team.
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Why didn't you just post this in the Maokai thread?
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On April 07 2011 03:08 Juicyfruit wrote:
I do believe the knockback creates a ministun that stops channeling and stops the usage of abilities and attacks by a fraction of a second.
it doesn't
did you even bother to test any of this guide or is it theorycrafting
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On April 07 2011 03:30 gtrsrs wrote:Show nested quote +On April 07 2011 03:08 Juicyfruit wrote:
I do believe the knockback creates a ministun that stops channeling and stops the usage of abilities and attacks by a fraction of a second.
it doesn't did you even bother to test any of this guide or is it theorycrafting
Lol I never had an ultied channel to stop when I played Maokai. I do know you don't do anything while you're being bumped though.
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United States47024 Posts
I can understand accidentally creating a new thread accidentally if it shifted past the first page, but the Maokai thread is still on the first page. Come on.
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Or maybe I feel the other one didn't have a quality opening post so I decided to make a new one before that one took off?
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i can't speak for all channels but i am 100% that it doesn't stop nunu or malzahar ults
it DOES knock teemo out of stealth though
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really? I could've sworn I'd knocked Malz and WW out of their ults with W -> Q (I assumed it was the Q that interupted them).
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well, this thread is better than the one i started 
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On April 07 2011 03:33 Juicyfruit wrote:
Or maybe I feel the other one didn't have a quality opening post so I decided to make a new one before that one took off?
So if I dont feel that your post is a quality starting post I should just a third Maokai post on the front page? I fail to see the logic in that.
OPs have updated posts with updated guides or better information before.
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Being a dick much? You do seriously have a problem with me creating a better starting point of discussion so that it actually matches the quality of other champion threads, or should I just ask this thread to be deleted right now?
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United States47024 Posts
On April 07 2011 03:33 Juicyfruit wrote:
Or maybe I feel the other one didn't have a quality opening post so I decided to make a new one before that one took off?
As a matter of precedent, I think it should be an issue of consensus for a new thread to get started replacing an old one, rather than just one person's opinion. If I recall, there was that Kassadin thread that recommended smite for laning that everyone pretty much called a joke before Uta posted his Kass thread, so its not like threads don't get replaced.
But yeah, if everyone went starting threads as they pleased because they don't consider the existing ones adequate it would be...not great.
On April 07 2011 03:44 Juicyfruit wrote:
Being a dick much? You do seriously have a problem with me creating a better starting point of discussion so that it actually matches the quality of other champion threads, or should I just ask this thread to be deleted right now?
It's more that the other thread hasn't even been out for a day, so the OP could very easily edit in some of the feedback from the posts below it. You didn't give that thread a chance to clean itself up before dismissing it entirely.
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I did it because I saw a different thread being started that didn't really have adequate amount of information in the opening post, and rather than let it go on for 5 pages like this thread:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=166890
I think I'll just start a new one now.
Mods are free to delete my thread anytime if they think I'm doing something wrong.
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oh, btw, flash > ghost on Maokai IMHO. You can pull some crazy far away burst shit with toss sapline -> flash -> root to ensure double sap hit + your Q and R.
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On April 07 2011 03:35 Mogwai wrote:
really? I could've sworn I'd knocked Malz and WW out of their ults with W -> Q (I assumed it was the Q that interupted them).
100% positive Q doesn't work on malzahar. maybe W was doing it
as for warwick, i was playing mid WW with a maokai on my team and he kept Qing people that i was ulting. it actually knocked ME out of my ult, cutting it short. happened 3 times in one game. supa frustrating.
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i was going to update the other thread, but this one is fine
I did go for flash instead of ghost for the surprise
I still went HP quints and not movement speed. I feel that i dont need to move THAT much starting the game since I mainly toss my saps. Flash lets me close in or run away.
I was solo top vs annie. That poor girl could not do ANYTHING.
I do like the 3 doran ring, merc tread, spirit visage, glacial. Worked really well in the laning phase.
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I need to test this, but my speculation is that for malzahar's ult, if he casts it at max range and your Q knocks him slightly further away, it'll interrupt the channel since he'll be out of range.
In which case Q will probably work well enough on certain channeled spells (fiddle, malz, maybe WW?) and not at all on others (nunu, kats)
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Russian Federation4235 Posts
Q does knock out Kat of her ult, that's what I can be sure of since I once played a game where my Q was the ONLY interrupt skill on the whole team and everything kinda depended on me landing it.
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Malzahar's Ult is like Fiddle Drain, you can move him around and it doesn't matter as long as he stays in range.
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holy shit, my eyes hurt from reading this, mind using black text?
or at the very least, spoiler the 'in-depth' shit
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I was solo top vs morde
Denied him the whole time, killed him 3 times. He couldnt farm or anything and I got the tower. It was great. Maokai's combo is great and followed with ignite brings the pain
Ended up 13-4-16
But my team was horrible and we lost.
I bought: 3x doran ring, merc treads, spirit visage, frozen heart, abyss scep, aegis, then rylia's
I was doing really well with that.
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HEY CLG is playing a 5 man game and Chauster is jungling Maokai - can someone check his mastery/rune setup and post it here?
and before you ask no I can't check
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i was maokai 1v1 top vs corki
i harass corki like crazy he says "maoaki is supposed to be a tank...."
i say "says who"
he says "says riot"
hehehe
then he dies from me
then complains that im not supposed to do that much damage
)
afterwards his team said he complained so much about it
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Just played another game
I felt bad for the other team
Bottom lane: Poppy and I (Maokai) vs Irelia and Morde
We super smashed them.
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tapi is like "fk that maokai thread it sucks the build sucks so i make my own kekeke" right right?
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Russian Federation4235 Posts
God if only the blasted tree didn't eat so much mana.
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Dude maokai is so good right now, open Dring -> dring -> sorc boots -> roa -> triforce -> whatever and sometimes toss a philo stone in there like chu8 does. Basically you win your lane and teamfights every time you show up if you farm well.
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Russian Federation4235 Posts
Tried no-sapling Maokai with roaming in mind recently and it felt very good. You don't really do THAT much damage early on, but your ganks are terrifying (both your disables are extremely reliable, unlike most roamers) and you're much more mana efficient than the sapling variance that has to b essentially after 2 combos.
Btw, Maokai is retardedly strong, I wonder how much time it will take for people to actually realize it, since it's like my highest win rate champ and I don't see anybody else playing him.
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On May 16 2011 21:40 BluzMan wrote:
Tried no-sapling Maokai with roaming in mind recently and it felt very good. You don't really do THAT much damage early on, but your ganks are terrifying (both your disables are extremely reliable, unlike most roamers) and you're much more mana efficient than the sapling variance that has to b essentially after 2 combos.
Btw, Maokai is retardedly strong, I wonder how much time it will take for people to actually realize it, since it's like my highest win rate champ and I don't see anybody else playing him.
I played him since release, sup (on EU, okay)
I tried a hybrid build for shits and giggles (sheen, boots, triforce, abyssal, sunfire, woulda prolly gone for gunbalde (lol) or more damage, his passive keeps him alive soo good)
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Just played him for the first time, seems very strong.
Sapphire+2 pot start into fast cata lets you spam E all you want, gives you very strong laning presence. Then go into RoA+tank items+sheen and you're very hard to kill while providing lots of utility and decent damage.
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On May 17 2011 02:02 APurpleCow wrote:
Just played him for the first time, seems very strong.
Sapphire+2 pot start into fast cata lets you spam E all you want, gives you very strong laning presence. Then go into RoA+tank items+sheen and you're very hard to kill while providing lots of utility and decent damage.
remember that abyssal is also really good on him after rod
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So since you're building RoA and Tri force, would you go armor pen or magic in that case?
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I still like magic pen because I also build sorc boots
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United States37500 Posts
+1 for magic pen on Maokai. His natural AS is so slow.
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Russian Federation4235 Posts
Magic Pen for that crazy lvl5-7 combos. No other choices rly.
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What's the logic behind Triforce?
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On May 17 2011 07:56 Tooplark wrote:
What's the logic behind Triforce?
chu does it. yes I know it makes no sense (beyond triforce being #1 item and always being a good idea)
also please don't make treeman FOTM, he's my favorite champ behind Shen, and you can imagine how often I get to play Shen.
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sheen procs add HUGE damage, your attackspeed goes up, your base damage is retarded high, it gives you movespeed and allows your passive to proc harder
it basically gives you an auto-attack that people have to worry about
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love mao, tough I'm constantly playing him the same way as for now thats the only build I've had success with; You have iced his killing tree
does anyone use the saplings as wards in the bushes if you stretch yourself too much top/bottom lane? I've had mixed results, it can be a lifesaver if you have lots of mias but if nothing happens it drains your mana fast
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On May 17 2011 22:07 Bloodash wrote:love mao, tough I'm constantly playing him the same way as for now thats the only build I've had success with; You have iced his killing treedoes anyone use the saplings as wards in the bushes if you stretch yourself too much top/bottom lane? I've had mixed results, it can be a lifesaver if you have lots of mias but if nothing happens it drains your mana fast
I use them as wards when I push but only if I don't know where all 5 of the enemy team is or if they have a jungler. Honestly you should be turret hugging if you don't know where all your opponents are located or if you have opponents with powerful globals like noc, shen, or tf.
I also use the Killing Tree build but I will be trying this one out tonight. I particularly like the idea of being able to kill the ranged creep waves at level 3 and zoning the rest excellent plan.
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Tried the build out last night won 5 of 6 games great build. I feel really strong early game after I have 3drings once I reach 6 or 7 I was nearly unkillable. Being able to have the full build up before 30 min mark is really refreshing, anything I am able to obtain after that point is just icing on the cake. The majority of games I play will end at or shortly after the 30 min mark. I would love to see more of the low cost quick builds for more champs as I have not found the high cost builds that take 50 mins or more to obtain the gold for helpful in the least.
GJ OP
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how do you lane as maokai and how are you supposed to chain together skills?
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Throw E at your opponent. Use W to lock them into place so E will hit your opponent. Q your opponent which will slow him for someone else to finish the job if your burst didn't kill them yet
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are you supposed to wait out the duration of the root then hit q?
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from what I remember seeing often is maokais activate their ult after rooting to you so that cast time/animation is done by the time the root is over. if you're not going to turn on ult then you might be able to fit in an auto attack in the duration of time before you Q them.
someone else have any info?
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whats wrong with W first then E? They might flash away or something before E does full damage?
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Yes.
There's a rather annoying amount of time during which you can't cast after W - or maybe it's just my poor internet or something - but I believe that anyone with mercs can avoid the sapling explosion if you combo WE.
Similarly, be careful about WRing into people because it's entirely possible you'll get CCed and nuked down before you can drop your ultimate. EW just requires that your E land more or less where they are when you root them. I dunno, I still don't have Maokai 'good' yet.
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Since w's duration goes up with time, and you don't max it until 2nd they can simply walk away from the explosion if you w->e
On July 04 2011 11:45 zulu_nation8 wrote:
are you supposed to wait out the duration of the root then hit q?
Yes
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On July 04 2011 11:59 zulu_nation8 wrote:
whats wrong with W first then E? They might flash away or something before E does full damage?
You have 2 ways to make the sapling connect one is almost 100% the other one is 50/50.
A) Throw Sapling at or behind target, then root, ult, Q
B) Root, Throw Sapling behind them or the direction you think they will run to seek safety once your ult goes off and the realize hitting you is futile, then Q sapling will run to them if you threw it close enough. Takes practice.
Getting the sapling to connect is something that takes time to learn but I have a very high success rate unless I totally screw up the toss.
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Can anyone confirm if W pops spells like Yi's alpha strike? I'm pretty sure Taric's stun got cancelled as I was traveling in that ball form.
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Twisted Advance is like Vlad's pool. It makes you untargetable, so it should be able to dodge alpha strike or Taric's stun. Using your W on a Yi who is using Alpha strike may produce wierd stuff though (as in you root him halfway through the spell and end up there, but the spell finishes and he ends up rooted somewhere else).
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Mathcrafted jungle Mao'kai route
The idea here is to be a full level ahead of a jungler who starts blue buff. This lets you be level 3 at 2:15 into the game. Side benefits include starting cloth armor (so you can build into early aegis for your team) and being able to steal your opponent's wraiths. Note that, without either a leash on big blue golem, or additional defensive runes/masteries, he will deal about 200 more damage than you can take.
If anyone has the appropriate runes to test this, I'd appreciate it. Mao is free this week, but I don't have all the flat AP runes this requires, and I'm not sure I want to invest 4K IP in case my math is wrong.
Open cloth armor, 2 mana potions, 2 health potions
At 1:16, E on wraiths (either yours or enemy's -- enemy's is more convenient, but yours are obviously safer). 180 mana remaining; drink mana potion
At 1:28, E on blue golem (186 mana remaining, 8s of mana potion remaining)
At 1:40, enemy wraiths spawn, E on them (172 mana remaining)
old E explodes on wraiths for 88 damage
new E impacts on wraiths for 45 damage
new E explodes on wraiths for 88 damage, totalling 221 damage, killing small wraiths, leaving big wraith at 129
129 HP means 3 hits at 43.6 damage each, which takes 4.32 seconds
1:45
finish large wraith, reach level 2. 224/296 mana. Begin second mana potion. Begin first health potion (this can be delayed a second or two)
head for big blue golem
1:54:
E and Q on big blue golem as it spawns. 18 mana and 11s of mana potion remaining
old E explodes for 88 damage
new E impacts for 45 damage
new E explodes for 88 damage
Q hits for 75
Total spell damage: 296.
2:06:
E big blue golem again. 45 impact, 88 explosion damage, 133 total. This will kill small lizards. 20 mana remaining. Drink 2nd health potion as first ends.
2:15:
15 autoattacks since big blue golem spawned = 753 damage, +133 from recent E, +296 initial spell damage = 1182 total damage. Smite for 470, finishing big blue golem, giving you level 3
About 60 mana right now
This can be accelerated by about 1.5s with the addition of 5.5 mana/5 from runes/masteries, as this will allow you an additional Q against big blue golem
This can be accelerated if a teammate hangs around to leash big blue golem. This is more important for surviving the fight with blue golem than it is for making it faster
Math notes (taken from wiki -- if these are wrong, the above is wrong too!):
Big wraith: 350HP, 35 armor, 0MR 1:40 spawntime
Little wraith: 220HP, 30 armor, 0MR 1:40 spawntime
Blue golem: 1625HP (champ level 2), 24 armor, 0MR 1:54 spawn time
Mana potion: 100 mana/10 seconds
Health potion: 200 health/10 seconds
Maokai:
L1:
58 damage + 0.95 = 58.95 (43.6 against 35 armor big wraith)
.694 attacks/second -> 1.44s/attack
250 mana
6.7 mana/5
E:
12s cd
70 mana
40 impact damage (+0.4*AP) = 45
80 explosion damage (0.6*AP) = 88
35s duration
L2:
61.33 + 0.95 = 62.28 damage (50.2 against 24 armor blue golem)
1.41s/attack
296 mana
7.15 mana/5
Q:
6s cd
55 mana
70 damage (+0.4*AP) = 75
470 damage smite
Runes:
9 blue flat AP = 0.99 * 9 = 8.91
1 quint alt AP = 4.95
= 13.86 AP (substitute other runes/masteries as desired)
1 red flat AD = 0.95 AD (substitute other runes/masteries as desired)
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Is anyone going to make a new Maokai thread? I can certainly update this one with other people's comments but I have hardly played any games with him for a very long time.
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oberon, how are you hitting level 2 after killing Wraiths? In total the Wraith camp only yields 180 experience.
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On July 21 2011 03:16 Juicyfruit wrote:
Is anyone going to make a new Maokai thread? I can certainly update this one with other people's comments but I have hardly played any games with him for a very long time.
I play him occasionally, but not enough to run the thread myself.
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On July 21 2011 03:29 Seuss wrote:
oberon, how are you hitting level 2 after killing Wraiths? In total the Wraith camp only yields 180 experience.
For some reason, I thought that wraiths got you to L2. The stuff on the wiki says otherwise. Can anyone confirm/deny? If not, you'd have to do wolves after gol to hit L3.
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wraiths dont get you level 2
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only blue, red, and twin get you to lv2.
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Red does not get you to lvl2, you'll miss it by a little.
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On July 21 2011 12:43 Ecael wrote:
Red does not get you to lvl2, you'll miss it by a little.
need two wisdom quints
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On July 21 2011 11:30 oberon wrote:Show nested quote +On July 21 2011 03:29 Seuss wrote:
oberon, how are you hitting level 2 after killing Wraiths? In total the Wraith camp only yields 180 experience. For some reason, I thought that wraiths got you to L2. The stuff on the wiki says otherwise. Can anyone confirm/deny? If not, you'd have to do wolves after gol to hit L3.
You get 180 exp before Awareness/Quints/Zilean. Speaking from experience.
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Russian Federation4235 Posts
On July 20 2011 23:16 oberon wrote:
Mathcrafted jungle Mao'kai route
The idea here is to be a full level ahead of a jungler who starts blue buff. This lets you be level 3 at 2:15 into the game. Side benefits include starting cloth armor (so you can build into early aegis for your team) and being able to steal your opponent's wraiths. Note that, without either a leash on big blue golem, or additional defensive runes/masteries, he will deal about 200 more damage than you can take.
If anyone has the appropriate runes to test this, I'd appreciate it. Mao is free this week, but I don't have all the flat AP runes this requires, and I'm not sure I want to invest 4K IP in case my math is wrong.
Open cloth armor, 2 mana potions, 2 health potions
At 1:16, E on wraiths (either yours or enemy's -- enemy's is more convenient, but yours are obviously safer). 180 mana remaining; drink mana potion
At 1:28, E on blue golem (186 mana remaining, 8s of mana potion remaining)
At 1:40, enemy wraiths spawn, E on them (172 mana remaining)
old E explodes on wraiths for 88 damage
new E impacts on wraiths for 45 damage
new E explodes on wraiths for 88 damage, totalling 221 damage, killing small wraiths, leaving big wraith at 129
129 HP means 3 hits at 43.6 damage each, which takes 4.32 seconds
1:45
finish large wraith, reach level 2. 224/296 mana. Begin second mana potion. Begin first health potion (this can be delayed a second or two)
head for big blue golem
1:54:
E and Q on big blue golem as it spawns. 18 mana and 11s of mana potion remaining
old E explodes for 88 damage
new E impacts for 45 damage
new E explodes for 88 damage
Q hits for 75
Total spell damage: 296.
2:06:
E big blue golem again. 45 impact, 88 explosion damage, 133 total. This will kill small lizards. 20 mana remaining. Drink 2nd health potion as first ends.
2:15:
15 autoattacks since big blue golem spawned = 753 damage, +133 from recent E, +296 initial spell damage = 1182 total damage. Smite for 470, finishing big blue golem, giving you level 3
About 60 mana right now
This can be accelerated by about 1.5s with the addition of 5.5 mana/5 from runes/masteries, as this will allow you an additional Q against big blue golem
This can be accelerated if a teammate hangs around to leash big blue golem. This is more important for surviving the fight with blue golem than it is for making it faster
Math notes (taken from wiki -- if these are wrong, the above is wrong too!):
Big wraith: 350HP, 35 armor, 0MR 1:40 spawntime
Little wraith: 220HP, 30 armor, 0MR 1:40 spawntime
Blue golem: 1625HP (champ level 2), 24 armor, 0MR 1:54 spawn time
Mana potion: 100 mana/10 seconds
Health potion: 200 health/10 seconds
Maokai:
L1:
58 damage + 0.95 = 58.95 (43.6 against 35 armor big wraith)
.694 attacks/second -> 1.44s/attack
250 mana
6.7 mana/5
E:
12s cd
70 mana
40 impact damage (+0.4*AP) = 45
80 explosion damage (0.6*AP) = 88
35s duration
L2:
61.33 + 0.95 = 62.28 damage (50.2 against 24 armor blue golem)
1.41s/attack
296 mana
7.15 mana/5
Q:
6s cd
55 mana
70 damage (+0.4*AP) = 75
470 damage smite
Runes:
9 blue flat AP = 0.99 * 9 = 8.91
1 quint alt AP = 4.95
= 13.86 AP (substitute other runes/masteries as desired)
1 red flat AD = 0.95 AD (substitute other runes/masteries as desired)
This all fails at the stage where you auto the red wraith. He has a lot of lifesteal so autoing him without AS/AD/APen takes a painfully huge amount of time.
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On July 21 2011 16:20 BluzMan wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2011 23:16 oberon wrote:
Mathcrafted jungle Mao'kai route
The idea here is to be a full level ahead of a jungler who starts blue buff. This lets you be level 3 at 2:15 into the game. Side benefits include starting cloth armor (so you can build into early aegis for your team) and being able to steal your opponent's wraiths. Note that, without either a leash on big blue golem, or additional defensive runes/masteries, he will deal about 200 more damage than you can take.
If anyone has the appropriate runes to test this, I'd appreciate it. Mao is free this week, but I don't have all the flat AP runes this requires, and I'm not sure I want to invest 4K IP in case my math is wrong.
Open cloth armor, 2 mana potions, 2 health potions
At 1:16, E on wraiths (either yours or enemy's -- enemy's is more convenient, but yours are obviously safer). 180 mana remaining; drink mana potion
At 1:28, E on blue golem (186 mana remaining, 8s of mana potion remaining)
At 1:40, enemy wraiths spawn, E on them (172 mana remaining)
old E explodes on wraiths for 88 damage
new E impacts on wraiths for 45 damage
new E explodes on wraiths for 88 damage, totalling 221 damage, killing small wraiths, leaving big wraith at 129
129 HP means 3 hits at 43.6 damage each, which takes 4.32 seconds
1:45
finish large wraith, reach level 2. 224/296 mana. Begin second mana potion. Begin first health potion (this can be delayed a second or two)
head for big blue golem
1:54:
E and Q on big blue golem as it spawns. 18 mana and 11s of mana potion remaining
old E explodes for 88 damage
new E impacts for 45 damage
new E explodes for 88 damage
Q hits for 75
Total spell damage: 296.
2:06:
E big blue golem again. 45 impact, 88 explosion damage, 133 total. This will kill small lizards. 20 mana remaining. Drink 2nd health potion as first ends.
2:15:
15 autoattacks since big blue golem spawned = 753 damage, +133 from recent E, +296 initial spell damage = 1182 total damage. Smite for 470, finishing big blue golem, giving you level 3
About 60 mana right now
This can be accelerated by about 1.5s with the addition of 5.5 mana/5 from runes/masteries, as this will allow you an additional Q against big blue golem
This can be accelerated if a teammate hangs around to leash big blue golem. This is more important for surviving the fight with blue golem than it is for making it faster
Math notes (taken from wiki -- if these are wrong, the above is wrong too!):
Big wraith: 350HP, 35 armor, 0MR 1:40 spawntime
Little wraith: 220HP, 30 armor, 0MR 1:40 spawntime
Blue golem: 1625HP (champ level 2), 24 armor, 0MR 1:54 spawn time
Mana potion: 100 mana/10 seconds
Health potion: 200 health/10 seconds
Maokai:
L1:
58 damage + 0.95 = 58.95 (43.6 against 35 armor big wraith)
.694 attacks/second -> 1.44s/attack
250 mana
6.7 mana/5
E:
12s cd
70 mana
40 impact damage (+0.4*AP) = 45
80 explosion damage (0.6*AP) = 88
35s duration
L2:
61.33 + 0.95 = 62.28 damage (50.2 against 24 armor blue golem)
1.41s/attack
296 mana
7.15 mana/5
Q:
6s cd
55 mana
70 damage (+0.4*AP) = 75
470 damage smite
Runes:
9 blue flat AP = 0.99 * 9 = 8.91
1 quint alt AP = 4.95
= 13.86 AP (substitute other runes/masteries as desired)
1 red flat AD = 0.95 AD (substitute other runes/masteries as desired) This all fails at the stage where you auto the red wraith. He has a lot of lifesteal so autoing him without AS/AD/APen takes a painfully huge amount of time.
Well, there are a lot of rune/mastery slots I wasn't using above. I wonder if those could make that part more efficient?
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Is the above information on Jungle Maokai above still current?
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On October 08 2011 07:44 Psyonic_Reaver wrote:
Is the above information on Jungle Maokai above still current?
After reading it I'm a little confused as to how you're supposed to E and Q blue as soon as you start it. To my knowledge, wraiths camp doesn't level you up to 2...
I go with roughly what TOO does. Which is blue crystal+2, with 9/0/21. Apen reds, Armor yellows, 3 flat AP and 5 (scaling or flat) mres glyphs, and 3 flat AP quints. The reason for the AP runes is so that you can insta-clear wolves with 4 saplings. I see other guides that only use 3 flat AP quints and no AP glyphs, but I can never make it work; I always end up having to auto the small wolves a lot :\
Basically you want to stack saplings at wolves starting 1:04-1:05. You should stack 3. Then when they spawn, you throw another sapling to kill all the small wolves. Big wolf should need like 2-3 more autoattacks to kill it.
Then get leash and ideally some help at blue. Clear blue then do a full clear, ganking when you can. R>Q>E>W, with one level in W at 3 or 4, depending on how early you want to gank.
I build RoA->Sheen->tanky/triforce/deathcap as needed. Merc treads vast majority of the time. You can also get dodge boots and build a spellblade for the tenacity if you want.
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United States47024 Posts
On October 08 2011 07:53 Ryuu314 wrote:
I go with roughly what TOO does. Which is blue crystal+2, with 9/0/21. Apen reds, Armor yellows, 3 flat AP and 5 (scaling or flat) mres glyphs, and 3 flat AP quints. The reason for the AP runes is so that you can insta-clear wolves with 4 saplings. I see other guides that only use 3 flat AP quints and no AP glyphs, but I can never make it work; I always end up having to auto the small wolves a lot :\
It's not "a lot". I believe it's 2 hits on the big wolf and 1 on each of the small ones. It's fine if you take some damage, because you'll heal off a passive proc after blue gets leashed for you anyway (which would have been wasted if you were full HP).
On October 08 2011 07:53 Ryuu314 wrote:
Then get leash and ideally some help at blue. Clear blue then do a full clear, ganking when you can. R>Q>E>W, with one level in W at 3 or 4, depending on how early you want to gank.
I go R>E>Q>W. Sapling maximizes your burst during ganks, which is, IMO what you want to worry about in levels 3-7. Part of what makes Maokai ganks so disgusting is how much damage getting hit by both hits of the sapling does.
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United States47024 Posts
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United States47024 Posts
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On October 08 2011 08:26 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2011 07:53 Ryuu314 wrote:
I go with roughly what TOO does. Which is blue crystal+2, with 9/0/21. Apen reds, Armor yellows, 3 flat AP and 5 (scaling or flat) mres glyphs, and 3 flat AP quints. The reason for the AP runes is so that you can insta-clear wolves with 4 saplings. I see other guides that only use 3 flat AP quints and no AP glyphs, but I can never make it work; I always end up having to auto the small wolves a lot :\ It's not "a lot". I believe it's 2 hits on the big wolf and 1 on each of the small ones. It's fine if you take some damage, because you'll heal off a passive proc after blue gets leashed for you anyway (which would have been wasted if you were full HP). Show nested quote +On October 08 2011 07:53 Ryuu314 wrote:
Then get leash and ideally some help at blue. Clear blue then do a full clear, ganking when you can. R>Q>E>W, with one level in W at 3 or 4, depending on how early you want to gank. I go R>E>Q>W. Sapling maximizes your burst during ganks, which is, IMO what you want to worry about in levels 3-7. Part of what makes Maokai ganks so disgusting is how much damage getting hit by both hits of the sapling does.
Yea, it's not a lot, but I take more damage than I really want lol x] At lvl 1-2 your passive doesn't heal for that much 'cause your HP pool is a bit low. Every bit of HP counts espeically since in solo queue most people just whack the blue golem once and that's it. They don't really like to help.
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Any tips on jungling tree? I'm going mpen/armor/mr/ap 5 runes and 0-21-9.
Regrowth/pot
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TOO's guide on solomid.net is really good. I basically just follow that.
My set-up:
Apen reds, Flat Armor seals, Mres/level blues, Flat AP quints (explanations in spoiler)
+ Show Spoiler +I go for apen reds over mpen because the armor penetration helps you clear faster as jungle monsters have armor but no magic resist. Magic pen reds make your ganks do a bit more damage, but I find that it really doesn't make that much of a difference. I prefer jungle speed more. Seals and blues are self-explanatory. You can sub some out for more flat AP runes if you want more damage. Flat AP quints are necessary so you can insta-clear camps.
Masteries I go 0/21/9 or 9/21/0
+ Show Spoiler +21 defense lets you clear with more hp and the cdr mastery is really useful for maximizing damage. The initiator mastery is nice as it helps your ganks a bit. The damage return mastery makes your clear a bit faster. As for where to put the 9 points it's up to you. 9 in offense gives you a bit more damage while 9 in utility gives you either more movespeed or more mana/mana regen, which can be useful once you start handing off blue buff+buff duration can be nice too.
Start Boots3pot or Regrowth1pot
+ Show Spoiler +Boots3pot can be used on pretty much any top tier jungler after the jungle remake. Boots gives you an easier time ganking and a faster clear due to getting to camps quicker. Regrowth lets you get your philo faster and saves some gold by not buying so many potions. It's completely up to you; both work fine. I think TOO uses regrowth+1potion.
Route:
Stack 3 saplings at wraiths before it spawns startin at 1:05. Save your fourth sapling for when wraiths spawn at 1:40. The impact and explosion damage + stacked saplings should 1-shot wraiths camp. Immediately walk to blue and you should reach blue about 1~2 seconds after it spawns at the latest. Get a leash if possible. Clear blue->wolves->wraiths(should have respawned by then)->minigolems then either back or do red. Either way, after you have double buff if you have enough hp go gank. Otherwise back and buy philo/boots.
For items I generally go for support stuff like shurelias/aegis/hog->randuins. If you want damage Triforce and/or Deathcap are good options. For armor go with Frozen Heart/Randuins. For mres go with Abyssal/FoN/Banshees.
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You can't stack 3 and have a 4th in time to clear fast at wraiths. You can however stack 2 and drop a 3rd on spawn. That + 2 autos on big wraith will clear. Stacking 3 at wolves work though.
Also TOO runs AS on reds iirc, not mpen.
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On December 28 2011 03:26 Ecael wrote:
You can't stack 3 and have a 4th in time to clear fast at wraiths. You can however stack 2 and drop a 3rd on spawn. That + 2 autos on big wraith will clear. Stacking 3 at wolves work though.
Also TOO runs AS on reds iirc, not mpen.
Oops yah that's wat I meant. I'll double check when I get home to make sure. If u grab flat AP runes u can cut more time by eliminating the need to auto the big wraith. If u start at wraiths you still want to make it to lie ASAP. Instaclearing wraiths lets you do that better.
Yea TOO runs aspd reds, I just prefer apen.
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On December 28 2011 03:46 Ryuu314 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 28 2011 03:26 Ecael wrote:
You can't stack 3 and have a 4th in time to clear fast at wraiths. You can however stack 2 and drop a 3rd on spawn. That + 2 autos on big wraith will clear. Stacking 3 at wolves work though.
Also TOO runs AS on reds iirc, not mpen. Oops yah that's wat I meant. I'll double check when I get home to make sure. If u grab flat AP runes u can cut more time by eliminating the need to auto the big wraith. If u start at wraiths you still want to make it to lie ASAP. Instaclearing wraiths lets you do that better. Yea TOO runs aspd reds, I just prefer apen.
You can't clear it with just saplings on only flat ap quints, considering that it takes 2 autos I doubt it'll be done with full ap on blue either. The autos are pretty much necessary and still works out to be effectively instant clear.
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From udyr thread:
On February 23 2012 06:10 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On February 23 2012 06:03 Two_DoWn wrote:
Good call on chalice on Mao btw. Gotta try that sometime. Although I freakin hate maokai. Much rather play Volibur or J4 if I want a strong ganker cuz at least then I scale into the lategame. That's cuz you like your farm. Maokai is good lategame, but he doesn't really want/need a ton of items to do what he needs to do. Jarvan and Voli are great 2nd/3rd position junglers, but suck dick as 4th position. Maokai is one of the best junglers to play 4th position.
I don't really agree with this. I mean, if you don't scale well with damage that's great because it's hard enough finding time to buy DPS items on bruisers anyway. If you have tons of armour you're such a huge threat because you give 0 fucks about their ADs damage but can CC them a ton. If you have to be really careful when you engage then you're not anyway near as scary as someone who will W anyone who's any bit out of position.
I mean, shurleyas/randuins/frozen heart/fon/mercs is a list of items you want to do your job on maokai and that's already 5 items.
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Hey guys, when I play jungle Maokai, I play him more support-like, how I can help my team rather than how I can carry. And from the Heart of Gold, is it okay if I build it into a Locket in order to provide not only an AoE shield, but also lots of health regen or should I just stick to Randuins?
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Depends what you consider "supporting your team". In my opinion, sitting on their AD carry for as long as possible and not allowing him to do damage to anyone else helps your team a lot more than a shitty shield. Really dislike iron solari based on how insane randunis is. In terms of supporting W into their team+randuins is a pretty sick initiate.
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FoN? I tend to prefer banshee to buffer a bit more HP/mana on him along with the MRes, since with CDR and his ult sustained teamfights take a toll on his pool, and his passive scales well with HP too.
But maybe it's because I complete FH first and Randuin's much latter that I find his HP pool doesn't compliment FoN's passive well.
As for playstyle, most of the time I end up peeling for my carry rather than sitting on theirs. Makes the root more useful (unless there's someone on your team with a gapcloser to use the opportunity) past the first one used to engage.
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Banshee is a really meh item. His passive scales with your total EHP, as it's %hp, getting resists make that HP stronger and more hp gives you more healing.
Once you're not dying instantly when you go in, Fon combined with your passive gives you pretty insane regen and helps you absorb poke before a teamfight. It gives tons of MR and movement speed which helps you get into range for your W and Q's. I don't see banshee comparing at all. With shurelyas+randuins+red pot or maybe aegis or something you're already at like 3k hp I'd far prefer FoN over banshee.
I tend to avoid dying in fights in general, so FoN always seems like a good idea once I have tons of armour/hp.
Like, I've never built fon and thought "Damn, that fon didn't do that much for me" in terms of a lategame item on people like maokai and udyr who survive so long in fights even without the regen from it.
I don't need the mana at all since typicall I have shurelyas+chalice+frozen heart which means you never ever run oom unless you left your ult on for like 30 seconds without realizing.
Often when I engage btw, I tend to W, or W+Q then instantly run away. I mean, it's not like you're doing anything once you use your Cd's so aside from getting behind them for your Q if their AD has like 4 damage items there's no reason to stay taking damage, just run away and wait for cds and throw saplings and ult and heal with passive and fon and stuff. A lot of effectively using items like FoN comes from basic sense and sensibility when it comes to avoiding damage instead of just saying "IM THE TANK COME AT ME BRO". A target with nothing to hit does 0 damage, a target with only maokai to hit still does more than that, and if he has nothing to hit he needs to move closer to a more vulnerable position. If tanks just stood there and tanked all day teamfights would all be about who kills the tanks faster.
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It's not that FoN isn't efficient, I agree, I just often feel awkward because building it is highly slot inefficient when you've already got some items because of the components and combined cost. I should try finishing randuin's once I bought a Negatron to see how I like my HP even without banshee.
I rarely had games where the AD carry went to the stage where he'd just kill me quickly, so perhaps I've been tainted by that "I'm sitting on your face, I don't do damage but you only tickles so in the end you'll die first" mentality.
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You haven't encountered 6 item vayne/kog/any ad with steriod, then?
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On February 23 2012 06:14 Slayer91 wrote:From udyr thread: Show nested quote +On February 23 2012 06:10 TheYango wrote:On February 23 2012 06:03 Two_DoWn wrote:
Good call on chalice on Mao btw. Gotta try that sometime. Although I freakin hate maokai. Much rather play Volibur or J4 if I want a strong ganker cuz at least then I scale into the lategame. That's cuz you like your farm. Maokai is good lategame, but he doesn't really want/need a ton of items to do what he needs to do. Jarvan and Voli are great 2nd/3rd position junglers, but suck dick as 4th position. Maokai is one of the best junglers to play 4th position. I don't really agree with this. I mean, if you don't scale well with damage that's great because it's hard enough finding time to buy DPS items on bruisers anyway. If you have tons of armour you're such a huge threat because you give 0 fucks about their ADs damage but can CC them a ton. If you have to be really careful when you engage then you're not anyway near as scary as someone who will W anyone who's any bit out of position. I mean, shurleyas/randuins/frozen heart/fon/mercs is a list of items you want to do your job on maokai and that's already 5 items.
just curious, anyone know what he means about "2nd/3rd/4th position"?
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On February 23 2012 07:02 Slayer91 wrote:
You haven't encountered 6 item vayne/kog/any ad with steriod, then?
Not even six item vayne. The second vayne gets a phantomdancer and a green elixir there's no such thing as "tickles."
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On February 23 2012 07:03 Mios wrote:Show nested quote +On February 23 2012 06:14 Slayer91 wrote:From udyr thread: On February 23 2012 06:10 TheYango wrote:On February 23 2012 06:03 Two_DoWn wrote:
Good call on chalice on Mao btw. Gotta try that sometime. Although I freakin hate maokai. Much rather play Volibur or J4 if I want a strong ganker cuz at least then I scale into the lategame. That's cuz you like your farm. Maokai is good lategame, but he doesn't really want/need a ton of items to do what he needs to do. Jarvan and Voli are great 2nd/3rd position junglers, but suck dick as 4th position. Maokai is one of the best junglers to play 4th position. I don't really agree with this. I mean, if you don't scale well with damage that's great because it's hard enough finding time to buy DPS items on bruisers anyway. If you have tons of armour you're such a huge threat because you give 0 fucks about their ADs damage but can CC them a ton. If you have to be really careful when you engage then you're not anyway near as scary as someone who will W anyone who's any bit out of position. I mean, shurleyas/randuins/frozen heart/fon/mercs is a list of items you want to do your job on maokai and that's already 5 items. just curious, anyone know what he means about "2nd/3rd/4th position"?
I think he means in terms of total gold on the team. Typically you might have
1: AD Carry
2: Solo top
3: AP Carry
4: Jungler
5: Support.
He's saying you'll need similar farm to your AP/Top (say) to be effective, while maokai doesn't need to worry about farming that hard because he'll always be useful even if he's not as farmed as he'd like to be.
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Well I said "rarely", of course that happens.
I read the udyr thread btw and I really like your idea of chalice. After the 2nd clear I'm never out of health on camps or even after ganks, but I get mana-starved pretty fast so it hurts my speed. Since I'm also hesitant sometimes as negatron/mercs isn't always enough when the enemy AP carry gets fed and upgrading a Negatron usually costs a lot for the additional MRes, chalice could actually complement that really well. I'll make sure to try that soon.
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Yeah, maokais MR always felt really low because he has no base scaling on it so the chalice just felt like win all around. You can delay your HoG when the MR lets you survive AP better anyway. ADs have a harder time owning you because your Q peels them off.
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I'm not very good so you guys can tell me if my reasoning is wrong here, but I don't really find any negatron items to be a very high priority on Maokai. The secondary stats and actives on items like Shurelya's, Randuins, Frozen heart, and Aegis seem much much more useful than those on veil or fon, and typically as a tank I feel like most of the damage I take should come from the AD carry rather than the AP carry anyway. I do find a lategame fon nice, but typically wouldn't build it until I already have a significant health pool from shurelyas and randuins.
Anyway, I was also wondering about getting mana and/or damage items to make later jungle clears without blue a bit more efficient. I usually find myself taking a really long time on buffs and even small golems when I don't have the mana to spam Q and E, or else I have to frequently back when I have plenty of health and stuff I want to do around the map but just run out of mana. So I've been considering getting either chalice, sheen (build into trinity force if the game goes that long), or blasting wand (probably would build into abyssal, which i like to get anyway on an ap-heavy team) - are these reasonable options to buy after double gp5?
Oh, and since Maokai is becoming as close as I'll probably get to a main champ, is there anyone in particular i should aim to ban when i plan to pick maokai? i've heard shyvana is a major counter, but what makes shyvana such a large threat for maokai? (if she counterjungles, is my CC not enough to keep her there long enough for lanes to come help? or should i not trust my soloqueue lanes to do that?)
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On February 23 2012 07:19 danana wrote:
I'm not very good so you guys can tell me if my reasoning is wrong here, but I don't really find any negatron items to be a very high priority on Maokai. The secondary stats and actives on items like Shurelya's, Randuins, Frozen heart, and Aegis seem much much more useful than those on veil or fon, and typically as a tank I feel like most of the damage I take should come from the AD carry rather than the AP carry anyway. I do find a lategame fon nice, but typically wouldn't build it until I already have a significant health pool from shurelyas and randuins.
Anyway, I was also wondering about getting mana and/or damage items to make later jungle clears without blue a bit more efficient. I usually find myself taking a really long time on buffs and even small golems when I don't have the mana to spam Q and E, or else I have to frequently back when I have plenty of health and stuff I want to do around the map but just run out of mana. So I've been considering getting either chalice, sheen (build into trinity force if the game goes that long), or blasting wand (probably would build into abyssal, which i like to get anyway on an ap-heavy team) - are these reasonable options to buy after double gp5?
Oh, and since Maokai is becoming as close as I'll probably get to a main champ, is there anyone in particular i should aim to ban when i plan to pick maokai? i've heard shyvana is a major counter, but what makes shyvana such a large threat for maokai? (if she counterjungles, is my CC not enough to keep her there long enough for lanes to come help? or should i not trust my soloqueue lanes to do that?)
1: I agree, hard to make MR items outside of FoN when you're really farmed. Mercs/aegis/chalice/ are better.
2: Chalice is really good. Sheen didn't convince me. I run out of mana as well a lot and since I bought chalice maokai is 10x more fun. Go like philo-->chalice-->hog-->shurelyas-->w/e
3: No real counters to maokai, just ban things that tend to own your team. (e.g gankers like rammus or shaco, or mids like kassadin or ahri or lb)
Like chalice is just ridiculous in the jungle when you can stay out of base for 5 mins+ it far outweights buying flat mana although glacial is the most efficienct way of getting it so thats why people like snoopeh get it fast. But then he lacks some HP in midgame and can't be so agressive in initiating teamfights.
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On February 23 2012 07:34 Slayer91 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 23 2012 07:19 danana wrote:
I'm not very good so you guys can tell me if my reasoning is wrong here, but I don't really find any negatron items to be a very high priority on Maokai. The secondary stats and actives on items like Shurelya's, Randuins, Frozen heart, and Aegis seem much much more useful than those on veil or fon, and typically as a tank I feel like most of the damage I take should come from the AD carry rather than the AP carry anyway. I do find a lategame fon nice, but typically wouldn't build it until I already have a significant health pool from shurelyas and randuins.
Anyway, I was also wondering about getting mana and/or damage items to make later jungle clears without blue a bit more efficient. I usually find myself taking a really long time on buffs and even small golems when I don't have the mana to spam Q and E, or else I have to frequently back when I have plenty of health and stuff I want to do around the map but just run out of mana. So I've been considering getting either chalice, sheen (build into trinity force if the game goes that long), or blasting wand (probably would build into abyssal, which i like to get anyway on an ap-heavy team) - are these reasonable options to buy after double gp5?
Oh, and since Maokai is becoming as close as I'll probably get to a main champ, is there anyone in particular i should aim to ban when i plan to pick maokai? i've heard shyvana is a major counter, but what makes shyvana such a large threat for maokai? (if she counterjungles, is my CC not enough to keep her there long enough for lanes to come help? or should i not trust my soloqueue lanes to do that?) 1: I agree, hard to make MR items outside of FoN when you're really farmed. Mercs/aegis/chalice/ are better. 2: Chalice is really good. Sheen didn't convince me. I run out of mana as well a lot and since I bought chalice maokai is 10x more fun. Go like philo-->chalice-->hog-->shurelyas-->w/e 3: No real counters to maokai, just ban things that tend to own your team. (e.g gankers like rammus or shaco, or mids like kassadin or ahri or lb) Like chalice is just ridiculous in the jungle when you can stay out of base for 5 mins+ it far outweights buying flat mana although glacial is the most efficienct way of getting it so thats why people like snoopeh get it fast. But then he lacks some HP in midgame and can't be so agressive in initiating teamfights.
Thanks for the advice! I guess I was mainly considering sheen because people run it on jungle alistar, but ya i'll definitely try out more chalice since I already have a kind of unhealthy obsession with that item.
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Banshee Veil's actually a pretty good item on Maokai and the catalyst can aid in keeping sustained in the jungle. I plan to give some test runs to something along the lines of boot+3 opener into catalyst.
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I've seen it done on (RoA usually) amumu. I think it comes down to being a less reliable method of sustaining yourself, so normally people try getting philo first. Once you decide to get philo, at least on maokai, hog+chalice seems like a much better investment.
I don't mind banshee if you are making good use of an early cata, but as a mid/late game anti AP item which is when most people get it I really hate it on melees, and people tend not to build it on ranged now either.
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I've read through the last couple of pages and I think adding my opening would help a bit.
Credentials: 1550 freeweek maokai with ~65% winrate so far.
I go 0/21/9, getting the mana masteries in utility and buff duration.
In defense I get the standard tanky jungler masteries and scaling CDR.
For runes, I have 3 AP quints, 9x attack speed marks, 9x flat armor seals, 5 flat AP glyphs and 4 flat MR glyphs.
The reason for this is that it makes your level 1 go extremely smoothly and gives you enough damage to clear wraiths quickly on your 3rd clear of them.
Open regrowth + a pot
At 1:04.5, throw your first sapling onto the wraiths. You should be standing in the direct line between the tower and where the big wraith spawns. Keep throwing saplings on cooldown. You should have 3 saplings explode at 1:40 which kills all the small ones and the big one should be the only one left. At ~1:41-1:42 you should throw one more sapling on top of the big wraith. Once it lands, start walking towards blue, the sapling should kill the big wraith.
Blue should spawn as you're rounding the corner to it and from then on follow the standard jungle paths. (I get double golems before red since smite + level 3 helps greatly)
After you kill red, if you got a good leash on blue, you should be at ~80% health if not higher including the pot you used. Level E->Q->E->W and then attempt to gank mid. At this point you should be a level above them and ~80% of the time you can get an easy kill (Don't run in from river, go around their blue side river wall so that they have a minimum of time to react. Twisted advance in, Q immediately and then throw a sapling along the retreat path. Clear wolves or B.
From there you can get a philostone which is plenty of sustain.
I go philostone -> boots of speed -> heart of gold -> shurelya's reverie. The reason for rushing the shurelya's is that it makes you tankier in the jungle, gives a huge amount of mp5 and most importantly, gives you a speed boost on a 60 second cooldown. Just pop the shurelya's and run in just as fast as a powerball rammus. The main thing about maokai that I've found is that he's a support far more than a bruiser aka udyr. Your job is to feed your lanes, not get fed.
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If you were to build one damage item on Maokai, what would it be - Sheen (=> TriForce), Rod of Ages, Abyssal Scepter, or, IDK, Wit's End? Usually play him in a v.supportive role, but occasionally I'll get remarkably fed and have a few more options open to me - any suggestions? Been playing a lot of Nautilus, who ostensibly has a lot in common with Mao, but I'm often able to get away with building Naut a lot weirder than Mao - Catalyst into RoA and grabbing boots/5, etc.
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RoA doesn't do enough for you late game, damage-wise, as it's only 80 AP. I'd say triforce, adds more slow to your cc, speed to escape/chase (he's amazingly good at this once he's got his share of cdr), some HP, and a damage passive that goes well with his very high base AD.
Nautilus loves wit's because it scales really well with his shield and also smoothes his animation to catch people with his passive.
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On February 23 2012 07:03 Mios wrote:Show nested quote +On February 23 2012 06:14 Slayer91 wrote:From udyr thread: On February 23 2012 06:10 TheYango wrote:On February 23 2012 06:03 Two_DoWn wrote:
Good call on chalice on Mao btw. Gotta try that sometime. Although I freakin hate maokai. Much rather play Volibur or J4 if I want a strong ganker cuz at least then I scale into the lategame. That's cuz you like your farm. Maokai is good lategame, but he doesn't really want/need a ton of items to do what he needs to do. Jarvan and Voli are great 2nd/3rd position junglers, but suck dick as 4th position. Maokai is one of the best junglers to play 4th position. I don't really agree with this. I mean, if you don't scale well with damage that's great because it's hard enough finding time to buy DPS items on bruisers anyway. If you have tons of armour you're such a huge threat because you give 0 fucks about their ADs damage but can CC them a ton. If you have to be really careful when you engage then you're not anyway near as scary as someone who will W anyone who's any bit out of position. I mean, shurleyas/randuins/frozen heart/fon/mercs is a list of items you want to do your job on maokai and that's already 5 items. just curious, anyone know what he means about "2nd/3rd/4th position"?
I think he meant in team select. You wouldn't first pick maokai.
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No, it's about the amount of farm granted to someone. It comes from DotA where it's possible to funnel all of the farm to a single hero, hence the "first", while in LoL you still have three lanes and you'd have trouble farming more than two (assuming who've got enough clearing power).
Maokai doesn't warrant too much farm over carries, because of his naturally good stats and heaps on utility that don't require items (cc, ult, etc.).
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On April 06 2012 23:31 Haasts wrote:
If you were to build one damage item on Maokai, what would it be - Sheen (=> TriForce), Rod of Ages, Abyssal Scepter, or, IDK, Wit's End? Usually play him in a v.supportive role, but occasionally I'll get remarkably fed and have a few more options open to me - any suggestions? Been playing a lot of Nautilus, who ostensibly has a lot in common with Mao, but I'm often able to get away with building Naut a lot weirder than Mao - Catalyst into RoA and grabbing boots/5, etc.
Abyssal or deathcap. Normally it's super lategame when getting more tanky isn't going to help at all since only carries do any damage to me at this point and they have lots of damage and armour pen anyways.
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On April 06 2012 23:31 Haasts wrote:
If you were to build one damage item on Maokai, what would it be - Sheen (=> TriForce), Rod of Ages, Abyssal Scepter, or, IDK, Wit's End? Usually play him in a v.supportive role, but occasionally I'll get remarkably fed and have a few more options open to me - any suggestions? Been playing a lot of Nautilus, who ostensibly has a lot in common with Mao, but I'm often able to get away with building Naut a lot weirder than Mao - Catalyst into RoA and grabbing boots/5, etc.
I'd go with RoA. It seems to sync perfectly with his playstyle and build and gives him both damage and survivability.
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The problem with ROA is that you're not going to get it early at all if you jungle as it's pretty low priority, so by the time the late game rolls around when you can actually afford a big damage item, it would be too late to justify buying a ROA as it's questionable whether or not you'll ever be able to charge it up.
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On April 06 2012 23:31 Haasts wrote:
If you were to build one damage item on Maokai, what would it be - Sheen (=> TriForce), Rod of Ages, Abyssal Scepter, or, IDK, Wit's End? Usually play him in a v.supportive role, but occasionally I'll get remarkably fed and have a few more options open to me - any suggestions? Been playing a lot of Nautilus, who ostensibly has a lot in common with Mao, but I'm often able to get away with building Naut a lot weirder than Mao - Catalyst into RoA and grabbing boots/5, etc.
You can only RoA if you're laning him, in which case you'd opt for a tanky AP with things like roa/abyssal and not just try to get all your damage off a single item.
In a traditional jungle role you really don't need to build damage, but if you had your heart set on it for whatever reason, I'd go triforce. You have no AD scaling and you don't really benefit from attack speed other than potentially getting a hit in a little quicker after your passive procs in a team fight (which is to say, not a whole lot added in most situations). Triforce at least gives you a little bit of everything and lets you slow something while waiting for Q/W to come back up. Q is a pretty short CD already, though.
If not Triforce, then probably Abyssal. He has good AP ratios and it provides a useful aura for the team while still giving him MR. Most teams tend to be AD heavy, so you only need a little MR (basically what you'd get from mercs + negatron) while needed to stack a lot more armor (randuins+heart frequently). Abyssal's aura (flat reduction) is more useful early on before people start getting MR, but since you normally need the armor first, you wouldn't get the Abyssal until after that point has passed. If you're laning Mao then you can get it earlyish vs a mage because you don't need the armor yet (though if going RoA you'll want to finish that first).
When I get ahead as jungle Maokai I don't try to build damage. Instead I opt for a quick oracles and maybe even a fast Shurelya's, which lets me constantly keep the pressure up. It's hard to kill a tank who's ahead and they'll want to target you more because you have the oracles, but now you're extra tanky (through items from kill gold) + ult + passive + level advantage, so it works out. Just don't go crazy tower diving when blind of enemy positions.
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What I've been doing, and it works for me thus far, is building tanky/support maokai and I only use him in the jungle.
I run standard jungle masteries 0/21/9 with mpen reds, armor yellows, mr/lvl blues, and ap quints, flash and smite.
I start regrowth + hpot, kill wraiths then blue buff, then clear jungle.
Skills: EQEWQR into R>Q>W>E. The 2 levels of E make clearing jungle faster early then maxing Q>W for stronger ganks.
Items: philo, boots, frozen heart, aegis, shurelias, abyssal (wards)
I will usually add in an oracles after i finish my frozen heart.
I usually end up with 200+ armor and 150+ resist which is all I ever need as well as max CD with masteries.
Typical KDA with this build is something like 5-5-15
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I guess I should add that in teamfights you basically become a walking rally flag for your team stand around. With so many support items, his ult, CC, and being naturally tanky you provide so much utility for your team. Also your job is not to dive the enemy carries but instead you excel at protecting your own. Trying to dive the enemy carries puts you to far from your teammates for your support items to be of any use. Instead when that enemy shyvana dives onto your AD carry you can root her on the spot and still be in the middle of your team to apply full support from your items. Maokai is an excelent peeler.
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Not sure if it's been discussed, but what about mobility boots on Maokai? In case their team is low on CC, I generally feel like I don't need Tabi and I think they could benefit him quite a bit, especially if he is ahead already.
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Mobility boots are pretty terrible on maokai. The reason you don't build mobility is that maokai generally builds shurelya's rather early (I go regrowth + pot -> philo+boots -> HoG -> boots2/shurelyas/oracle, depending on the game). The only reason maokai needs the speed is to close enough to get a W off since his ability to stay glued onto someone is amazing after he gets onto them.
It's much better to get tankier earlier in order to make bigger plays (chain vest to tank tower, oracles to get map control etc.)
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mobility boots are a traditionally a ganker item (usually on something like shaco who ganks all day). They are typically used because they dramatically reduce time between lanes, not necessarily to catch somebody (tho it does have that aspect). You're not going to be shurelia's-ing 24-7, so if you really don't feel a need for tabi/mercs, then mobility could be an option.
granted, I don't know much about maokai, but I got the impression he's a gank-oriented jungler, so mobility boots do make some amount of sense.
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On May 23 2012 08:20 barbsq wrote:
mobility boots are a traditionally a ganker item (usually on something like shaco who ganks all day). They are typically used because they dramatically reduce time between lanes, not necessarily to catch somebody (tho it does have that aspect). You're not going to be shurelia's-ing 24-7, so if you really don't feel a need for tabi/mercs, then mobility could be an option.
granted, I don't know much about maokai, but I got the impression he's a gank-oriented jungler, so mobility boots do make some amount of sense.
Maokai is a gank oriented jungler, however, his twisted advance is a 650 range guaranteed snare/gap closer. Even with just boots1 it's really, really easy to get onto someone. Shurelya's enables your teammates to follow up on your initiate. He also clears wolves/wraiths extremely quickly (One E, 1-2 Q's will finish the camps for 80% of most games). Even if you feel that not getting mercs/tabi is possible, once teamfights roll around, you will miss them. Having high resistances combined with maokai's ultimate makes him an insane cockblock in teamfights (Focusing him is a bad idea, too tanky, not focusing means he cc's everything).
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They're not terrible. They add to his already strong ganks pretty well. Their point on Maokai isn't to run from lane to lane quickly so much as lock down the laner before he can get to safety. Him being able to run for a second less before you catch up can easily make the difference. There is a bit of redundancy only if you are rushing Shurelya's and a large portion of the time you don't rush it because you want tanky items sooner. Even when you do, the laning phase is largely over by the time you finish Reverie. Shurelya's rush is something you do when you're doing well or against weak(ish) laners. Don't forget that Mercs provides more than just the tenacity. The MR/Armor components of the boots are pretty good to get early.
Otherwise, you just want to get tanky early. Aegis is an incredibly good first core item for Maokai after your boots and philo. I skip HoG half the time because you don't necessarily want to build Randuin's (esp if you plan to get FH first) and going 2 gp10 just sacrifices being tankier / doing more damage early on.
If you go boots, 2 gp10, Shurelya's then you can gank well enough 2v1, but you're weak as hell in group skirmishes because you have essentially no items providing meaningful defenses. It also makes Oracle's riskier because you can die so easily, but at least you can use Shurelya's to run away in some cases.
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As someone who plays a pretty decent amount of mao, I'm depressed about the lack of discussoin in this thread 
So anyway, recently been seeing a lot of mobility boots on Mao's (and have been trying it out myself to great success). Being able to land that w earlier makes a huge difference. Also, mobility boots + shurelyas means your late game engagements are unavoidable.
However, I find that in the late earlyish / mid game, and even late game I am very MR deprived. I actually stopped going tabis for a bit and going merc treads because I felt like ganking mid (esp when they had an AP dmg based jungler e.g. mumu) could be a liability against bursty mids. Furthermore, in any kind of early team fights (such as over dragon). I feel very vulnerable to the burst AOE from Annie / Gragas / Ahri etc.
Meanwhile, I think mao is particularly nice because he has great mid ganking potential . . . so this has been frustrating.
What do you guys think of these solutions:
1) Run flat MR Blues instead of MR / lvl (late game we can get some MR items after we build our core)
2) Chalice (I would build it after philo then proceed to build Aegis. I sorta like this option because Mao can run out of mana in jungle / in engagements)
3) Get a negatron instead of glacial (I don't like this because FH is so great.... but abyssal is still good item on mao, even after the aura range nerf).
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Btw, I'm assuming Mao core is Merc/Mobility Boots, Philo (=> Shureylas after glacial before FH), HoG and/or Aegis, and FH
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1) I run 20 AP on maokai, 15 from quints and the rest from flat blues. It doesn't give a particularly large amount of MR. Against dangerous mids you'll want to lay down your ulti the moment you W in as opposed to throwing a sapling or hitting Q. Your ultimate gives enough survivability that you shouldn't be able to get bursted. I personally grab a ruby crystal+null magic on maokai for an aegis after core items.
2) Philo is generally enough on maokai I find. As long as you only take wolves/wraiths, I find it hard to run oom. Taking doubles takes more mana and time than it's worth on maokai. Chalice is a good item but not something that maokai needs.
3) I like grabbing aegis for MR much more than getting negatron based items. FoN is good but it doesn't give tankiness + CDR like shurelyas or glacial and cdr helps you do your job better in teamfights, both in terms of sustain through your passive and in the CC you can put out.
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There's little point in running Flat MR Glyphs instead of MR/Lvl. The difference is ~4 MR at level 6, and they're even at level 9. Unless you're going for ludicrously early Dragons, which really shouldn't happen on Maokai unless you're extremely safe anyway, which MR runes you use shouldn't make a significant difference.
Chalice isn't that great if you're already planning on Shurelya's + FH because the only item it builds into is Grail, whose CDR will be redundant.
You should be building Aegis unless someone else on your team is planning to. It's a significantly stronger mid-game item than Frozen Heart as most of the damage your team takes at that point isn't coming from auto-attacks. If the enemy AP is fed or the enemy is using a double AP comp you should have no issue going Aegis -> Negatron -> Glacial.
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What if we went chalice and replaced the FH with an Abyssal or Randuins depending on the matchup? Especially on a composition where top wants to get a FH anyway.
I do have mana problems with Maokai in the late late game during prolonged engagements, so grail might be nice. That said, that awkward period with no CDR before Shurelya's is annoying (albeit, you'll be getting shurelya's a little faster because chalice is so cheap).
We could also replace philo and go HoG but shurelyas is so good on mao so I don't know.
Another question: are people getting HoG? I've been trying it out with some success. Mao feels really low on HP in the midgame and Aegis + HoG fills that gap nicely IMO. I've been getting it when it feels difficult to gank any of the lanes. Mao's ganking power still feels largely undiminished despite the delayed glacial. When you can land a combination of randuins and your Q on the entire team it feels quite strong
edit: grail = / = glacial. woops
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On August 31 2012 05:54 Mauzel wrote:
What if we went chalice and replaced the FH with an Abyssal or Randuins depending on the matchup? Especially on a composition where top wants to get a FH anyway.
I do have mana problems with Maokai in the late late game during prolonged engagements, so grail might be nice. That said, that awkward period with no CDR before Shurelya's is annoying (albeit, you'll be getting shurelya's a little faster because chalice is so cheap).
We could also replace philo and go HoG but shurelyas is so good on mao so I don't know.
Another question: are people getting HoG? I've been trying it out with some success. Mao feels really low on HP in the midgame and Aegis + HoG fills that gap nicely IMO. I've been getting it when it feels difficult to gank any of the lanes. Mao's ganking power still feels largely undiminished despite the delayed grail. When you can land a combination of randuins and your Q on the entire team it feels quite strong
I wouldn't replace FH unless you're absolutely certain top is getting it, it's way too important to ignore. If you don't need Chalice until the late late game don't build it until then and get other, more important items sooner. Also, unless you're fed or your team is hurting for damage sources Spirit Visage is probably a better option than Grail.
I haven't bothered with HoG since before the nerf as a jungler. Getting an early Kindlegem or a faster Aegis is much stronger.
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I really don't understand why you wouldn't want to get FH. The CDR is really important for being relevant in teamfights. As for this point:
3) Get a negatron instead of glacial (I don't like this because FH is so great.... but abyssal is still good item on mao, even after the aura range nerf).
It doesn't make any sense to me because whether or not you get a chain mail or a negatron is entirely dependent on the enemy team. Comparing an armor item with an mr item as if they are interchangeable is just a complete lapse in thought.
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korea, I was referring to situations where I felt like mao needs additional MR. Mao usually has really low MR because we give up our blue MR / lvls for AP so we can 1shot wraiths. For example, there have been several situations where I was wary of ganking mid (such as an Annie loaded with an ulti) because I knew that she could likely burst me down even from close to full health if I wasn't careful. I wouldn't want to get FH if someone top (Malphite, Nunu, maybe even Udyr) would use it.
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Uh, you don't have to take any ap in your runes to do the wraith -> blue start, and why would you ever want to forgo your mr/lvl runes for ap just for the sole purpose of 1shotting wraiths anyway? You already farm pretty fast in the early levels anyway.
And obviously if you have to get mr then you'll get a negatron before any chainvest items. That's just obvious thinking.
edit: since the jungle remake you just take boots3, put two saplings at wraiths then toss your third right before the wraiths spawn so they take full damage from your third sapling. Then you punch the big wraith 2 times and run to your blue, and you'll make it like a second after blue spawned if you did it properly. There is absolutely no reason you should ever take AP runes on Maokai jungle.
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On August 31 2012 07:31 koreasilver wrote:
Uh, you don't have to take any ap in your runes to do the wraith -> blue start, and why would you ever want to forgo your mr/lvl runes for ap just for the sole purpose of 1shotting wraiths anyway? You already farm pretty fast in the early levels anyway.
And obviously if you have to get mr then you'll get a negatron before any chainvest items. That's just obvious thinking.
edit: since the jungle remake you just take boots3, put two saplings at wraiths then toss your third right before the wraiths spawn so they take full damage from your third sapling. Then you punch the big wraith 2 times and run to your blue, and you'll make it like a second after blue spawned if you did it properly. There is absolutely no reason you should ever take AP runes on Maokai jungle.
With 20 AP, you can take wraiths from the mid tower, allowing you to reach blue with a regrowth pendant without making your midlaner wait. It also happens to make your early levels a bit quicker.
Beyond that though, I really don't like ever building offensive items on maokai, even items like RoA or Abyssal. He has good scaling but his primary job is to soak up damage between his passive and his ultimate and be as disruptive as possible, CDR + resists help him do that far more effectively than AP does. His ultimate if used in a good spot mitigates a huge amount of incoming damage and that makes up for not dealing much damage innately. It's much more effective to have mercs+FH+aegis+randuins+shurelyas that gives you 40% CDR and a LOT of tankiness so that you can do your job of peeling/CCing the threats as opposed to mercs+Abyssal+Randuins+shurelyas or some other combination of tanky mage gear.
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Don't even need the randuins to have 40% CDR if you have points in Enlightenment. Not that it's a bad item for Mao by any stretch of the imagination, it's rather awesome for him.
With the abyssal nerf though, Mao's one of few characters that can get his team's magic damage characters to benefit from the Abyssal aura.
I haven't built Spirit Vis on him, but it's a great item for him on paper. His passive healing is already quite strong, and the other stats on it are awesome for him.
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Opening with regrowth just isn't that great on Maokai. It hinders your lv 3-4 ganking ability way too much compared to boots. It simply is not worth it most of the time. I'm really not sure why some of you guys are seriously considering taking ap runes over mr/lvl and ms. You're screwing up both your early game (ganking power) and lategame (mr/lvl >>>>>>>>>>>>> ap) tremendously. All of that just for a very forgettable increase in jungling speed on a champion that already has a very good first clear? Definitely not worth it.
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It's mostly that hitting lvl 4 so quickly means that a lvl 4 gank with flash or ghost is incredibly potent with or without boots. The regrowth pendant means you can build philo that much earlier, and I usually can go home, buy boots +philo 3 pots worth of gold faster. If your gank doesn't work out with boots 3 pots, you're more behind compared to a mao whose gank failed with a regrowth
I haven't had problems with Mao's lategame personally. But maybe you're just that much crazier with that extra mr... i dunno. Conceptually I'm trying to make Mao's early/mid game as strong as possible because it's where he really shines.
I've never actually tried a boots 3 pots opening so I'll give it a chance. I run 0/15/15 masteries on maokai for the gp5 and gold though. Korea do you run 0/21/9?
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Imo boots is definitely the way to go on mao,along with udyr runes and masteries.
Wraiths start is extremely overrated I think because you are forced to do golems if you want that quick lvl 4 which chew on you quite a bit and I don't like doing them at all without smite.
Wolves->Blue->wraiths->wolves->red->wraiths is so much better because mao takes literally no damage at camps that he can just aoe down and this way you have smite on time for red if you don't get a super leash on blue.Checking/"warding" red with a sappling before you go back to do wolves is another convenience with mao.
With boots you can really utilize that strong gank potential that mao has at lvl 3-4 with double buff.I often find myself in situations where I am forced to burn flash to get that gank off with the regrowth opening because I'm just too slow as everyone is coming to lane with boots.
Also boots are vital if you get caught in the jungle or need to counter gank.
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The problem I have with the regrowth opening is that it really gives up just how strong Maokai's lvl3 ganks can be when you open E-Q-W. Having boots before your first buy makes your ganks so much stronger without you having to blow flash because you don't have the ms to close the gap that is necessary. Regrowth is only better if you're just planning on afk farming before your first buy, which just isn't a great way to play Maokai since his lvl 3-5 is so strong. Now obviously if you don't pull off a gank then you'll be a little behind compared to regrowth, but the difference is that boots openings allows you to seize opportunities far better and helps out your laners. On top of that, regrowth opening makes you very susceptible to counterjungling and when shit happens, boots3 are going to help you get out of sticky situations much better. Boots opening is both safer while also giving you great ganking power at lvl3, whereas the only thing regrowth gives you is a slightly earlier philo. I just don't think it's worth it anymore. Maokai is my third most played champion and I've done a lot of games both with regrowth openings and boots openings (and different rune set ups) and after a good 4-5 months or so, I've settled into the set up I use for him now (0/21/9, as/armor/mr-lvl/ms, boots3). Pretty much identical to Udyr, like the poster above stated.
But I disagree a bit with the wraiths start. The main issue with the wraith start is that a lot of people now check your wraiths to pop your saplings to screw with you. Wraiths start is still really good if you can pull it off because you hit lvl3 if you pull off the wraiths->blue->wolf->wraith path and if the enemy mid isn't playing smart you can immediately pull off a really strong gank when the mid laners are still lvl2. It comes out really quickly and is often unexpected. I guess also, as a side note, not taking W at lvl3 hinders Maokai way too much.
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Like most junglers who generally don't get CC until level 3/4, don't level your third skillpoint immediately. Take a look around and if a lane is pushed, get to the lane and level it when you see a chance to gank, otherwise level your clear skill and go back to farming.
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Often there won't be any gank opportunities right when you hit lvl3 and something happens while you're clearing to hit lvl4. Your clearing speed really isn't hit to a point where it's really detrimental by taking W at lvl3. Maokai is not like Nautilus.
Maokai's usefulness when he has W is astronomically higher than when he doesn't.
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I also really like an early level 3 gank. However, do what Lmui said - don't put the point in W until you're at a lane where you think you'll get it off.
Boots greatly change whether you're going to get that W off, ESPECIALLY if you are forcing the gank by running past a ward - something Maokai is actually very good at doing early on. It's also why mobility boots are becoming common on him. Fuck the wards im ganking you anyway.
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Ganking top at 2 or 3 depending on which jungle you're in is so strong. At level 2 just show up and blow a flash then stay there if there's a kill and if there's not, well, your laner just won. I just camp top until they're winning the lane then focus on clears/bot/dragon. Open boots 3 into mob boots then get philo/hog -> sunfire -> negatron with oracles when you think it'll pay off.
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The only time I wouldn't take W at L3 is if I was denied blue, to be honest.
I'm a fan of grabbing Chalice after Philo / prior to Aegis; if I've built FH/Reverie, I can always sell it if the game has dragged on long enough, and if not (my last Maokai game, both our mid Ryze & top Yorick built Frozen Heart), being able to build Randuin's Omen as an armor item and get Athene's Unholy Grail to usefully cap out on CDR is nothing to sneeze at.
Thanks for the heads-up on not needing AP post-remake for a wraiths start, koreasilver - I'd figured out I no longer needed AP blues, but hadn't realised I could drop the quints and only need one more auto on the large wraith.
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5HIT, do you go sunfire to help your clears once you can't EQ a camp instantly anymore? I tend to prefer FH to give my cc some CDR, but I guess I can see how the HP buffer helps as Mao doesn't have Nunu/Blitz/Ali levels of HP.
Chalice's really good to help the mana stay high, I noticed that unless I ganked a lot and thus skipped on clears, doing golems would generally cost too much time/mana and I'd be too low on mana to gank a lot because of them.
I'm having trouble ganking a lot as Maokai, though, particularly during his strong levels (3-5). Maybe I should start wolves, request a big pull on blue so as to avoid smiting it, then immediatly rush the red buff and gank whatever lane is available, go back to wraiths, do wolves (or golems if smite is up) and gank as soon as there is an opportunity, focusing on only clearing small camps and doing the golems when there isn't a buff/drake attempt in the near future and my smite is up.
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On September 04 2012 21:39 Alaric wrote:
5HIT, do you go sunfire to help your clears once you can't EQ a camp instantly anymore? I tend to prefer FH to give my cc some CDR, but I guess I can see how the HP buffer helps as Mao doesn't have Nunu/Blitz/Ali levels of HP.
Chalice's really good to help the mana stay high, I noticed that unless I ganked a lot and thus skipped on clears, doing golems would generally cost too much time/mana and I'd be too low on mana to gank a lot because of them.
I'm having trouble ganking a lot as Maokai, though, particularly during his strong levels (3-5). Maybe I should start wolves, request a big pull on blue so as to avoid smiting it, then immediatly rush the red buff and gank whatever lane is available, go back to wraiths, do wolves (or golems if smite is up) and gank as soon as there is an opportunity, focusing on only clearing small camps and doing the golems when there isn't a buff/drake attempt in the near future and my smite is up.
Open boots+3 if you're having trouble ganking. Regrowth makes initiating the gank much more difficult. The hardest part of ganking on maokai is getting onto someone. Going from places like tribush on top/bot, around the wraith or blue side on mid helps a lot, especially if your midlaner is smart and cuts off other avenues of escape. Once you W on, immediately walk away from where you want them and Q before tossing a sapling. As you get more points in your W, you'll be able to throw a sapling before you Q them but at first, you don't root them long enough to do that so just get your CC off and hope for damage from your laner.
The only time before you have a few points in W that you want to do anything before you Q is when they don't have flash, are a bursty mid-laner (get your ulti down ASAP). Maokai's Q does slow so early on he has about 3 seconds of CC so red isn't strictly necessary to gank effectively, it just adds a hefty bit of damage to maokai's autoattacks.
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Yeah, I know all this, but it's more about timing, being where I need when I'm needed, and stuff like that, and especially having enough health/mana. I used to do wolves->blue->wraiths->wolves->red, but it is far too long and taxing, that I can't gank reliably more than once after that.
Also I have trouble ganking in general when people aren't past the river/their half of the lane. I should do more inlane ganks (especially top) or simply dive, I guess. Hard at level 3 though.
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Yay for the price reduction. Gonna buy him! Is the build in the OP still viable? I don't think triple dring is the way to go anymore..
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On September 05 2012 11:10 Leeto wrote:
Yay for the price reduction. Gonna buy him! Is the build in the OP still viable? I don't think triple dring is the way to go anymore..
Generally Boots+3 or regrowth+1 and then get a philo+boots. From there, HoG/Aegis/shurelyas or work towards boots2/5+oracles.
You're aiming for FH+randuins+shurelyas+boots+aegis+something lategame, that something can be MR such as FoN, GA for even more armor, warmogs if your passive is stacking itself up nicely in teamfights.
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On September 05 2012 11:10 Leeto wrote:
Yay for the price reduction. Gonna buy him! Is the build in the OP still viable? I don't think triple dring is the way to go anymore..
The OP was written very shortly after he came out. His place has since changed - he's a support/utility/gank jungler.
I suppose Dorans -> Tank items instead of Philo/gp10s -> tank items would work if you don't like GP10s, though.
However, Shurelia's is great to have on him (gp10 buildup, CDR, regen, active are all great on Maokai.)
Quick-n-dirty Current Maokai Guide
Masteries: 0/21/9 or 9/14/7 (MP5, Initiator, CDR
Runes: AS / Armor / MR / MS
Optional specialty runes: AS / Armor / Mix of flat AP and MR / AP (lets you do cheeky things level 1 like oneshot wraiths. Many have made a case that it's not worth it.)
+ Show Spoiler [Rune choice explanation] +
AS is preferred over MPen usually because jungle monsters don't have MR, and your base damage is on the upper end.
Boots 3pot start (Regrowth + 1pot start is optional, but you're giving up a lot of early gank power. You're not amumu or something where your gank power increases substantially at 6 - your gank power is terrifying right when you put that point into W, and it's a shame if you can't get in range to use it. Be aware that your base movespeed isn't good, which is why most prefer MS quints and why Initiator is prioritized over Enlightenment (get both if you're going 21 defense, though. If you have 9 in offense, you're getting a little CDR there instead.)
Another reason brought up for AS runes is that in teamfights, your passive is coming up VERY quickly, and the faster auto helps heal yourself significantly.
Skills:
EQW Q>W>E (Some prefer a second point of E early for the slightly more efficient clearing power.)
Generalized core items on maokai (pick and choose defensive items according to the game, of course
Early:
Boots
Philo
Treads, Tabi or Mobility Boots
Optional Oracles
Wards
Mid: choose which items are applicable. Aegis is a good early build vs. Double AP teams. Glacial before Aegis works well vs. more AD-oriented teams. Shurelia's usually follows whichever of these you buy first. Spirit Visage is a niche item vs. very heavy AP teams, it synergizes well with your passive and your kit.
Aegis
Glacial Shroud
Spirit Visage
Shurelia's Reverie
More Wards!
Late:
Frozen Heart
Randuin's Omen (Warden's mail first > HOG first, imo.)
Abyssal Scepter (if noone on team has it and you really want an AP item, or if both teams have significant magic damage, and you didn't already stack the shit out of MR. Remember that this magic damage can come from non-AP characters such as Corki or Jax.)
Never Stop Warding!
+ Show Spoiler [Random Tips] +
- Never [almost] clear golems. All of your clearing power comes from AOE abilities. Even with smite, Golems are surprisingly slow. Your bot or top lane should take these if it's ever helpful for them to do so.
- You can jump to creep camps over the wall using sapling [E] for vision followed by Twisted advance [W] to gapclose.
If you're ganking a lane and they are escaping down the lane brush, toss your sapling into the brush to give you vision to Twisted Advance [W] Be aware that this has a substantial mana cost since otherwise you don't use Twisted Advance (75 mana) on jungle camps. Rarely, this technique can also be used to escape from enemies. It doesn't have enough range to jump over Dragon or Baron pit, though.
- Especially at higher ranks Vengeful Maelstrom has a short enough cooldown that it can be used as an additional ability for things like clearing power. The initial mana cost is about the same as your other abilities, but it can be costly to maintain for more than a few seconds for these secondary purposes.
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Maokai is truly my best character. I have always wondered how high I could ride him, ELO-wise, if I played him in every ranked game. I almost never play him though. I need to pick him up again.
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He's good, but starts to fall off a bit the higher Elo you get. You get faceroll easy ganks for awhile, then people learn how to flash into the tower to drag you.
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On September 05 2012 12:21 Craton wrote:
He's good, but starts to fall off a bit the higher Elo you get. You get faceroll easy ganks for awhile, then people learn how to flash into the tower to drag you.
If they flash into tower you have to flash out, not a huge deal unless they were at tower to begin with. It hurts them more than it hurts you though since next time round, they won't have it up to kill you with.
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The biggest reason you want AS instead of MPen is because during full 5v5 fights, your passive comes up stupid fast and you want the AS to help you have infinite health. Maokai's base AS increases are pretty awful (but better than Nautilus lololol) so even at lvl 18 its noticeable.
In terms of clearing jungle, except with buff camps, AS vs MPen doesn't matter because QQE kills everything anyways.
Edit: Also, I've been running GP10 quints because it lets me sit in top lane bushes for years and not feel too bad. It also allows me to buy mobo boots first back korean style and still have income. I haven't noticed the MS quint difference on lvl 3/4 ganks because no one has wards so you don't need to do as much running.
I also experimented with 0/17/13 masteries letting me take 4 in the GP10 tree but after some games actually going longer than 25 mins, the 8% CDR and 10% HP bonuses are too good to give up.
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On September 05 2012 13:40 xes wrote:
The biggest reason you want AS instead of MPen is because during full 5v5 fights, your passive comes up stupid fast and you want the AS to help you have infinite health. Maokai's base AS increases are pretty awful (but better than Nautilus lololol) so even at lvl 18 its noticeable.
In terms of clearing jungle, except with buff camps, AS vs MPen doesn't matter because QQE kills everything anyways.
Edit: Also, I've been running GP10 quints because it lets me sit in top lane bushes for years and not feel too bad. It also allows me to buy mobo boots first back korean style and still have income. I haven't noticed the MS quint difference on lvl 3/4 ganks because no one has wards so you don't need to do as much running.
I also experimented with 0/17/13 masteries letting me take 4 in the GP10 tree but after some games actually going longer than 25 mins, the 8% CDR and 10% HP bonuses are too good to give up.
Oh, I hadn't thought of the activation of the passive repeatedly in teamfights. Good point. I edited it into my miniguide.
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Czech Republic11293 Posts
Just want to make a quick comment regarding the Wraiths camp start.
First, you need some amount of AP to do it (11 I think?) so that scales a little bit worse than what you would usually have (movement speed in quints). Second, you can't use your saplings to scout for enemy, which makes it much easier to invade you. Third, wraiths start makes sense only if you plan to go Wraiths-Blue-Wolves-Wraiths, which makes it very very easy for enemy jungler to steal your red buff (particularly if Maokai is purple side).
So I'd generally not reccomend doing it.
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Maokai strat for low ELO:
Say to your team, "I'm a smurf, just don't feed."
Then your team is magically 5-0 after 10 mins.
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I just explained two pages ago on how you don't need any AP to do the wraith start after the jungle remake.
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On September 07 2012 00:15 koreasilver wrote:
I just explained two pages ago on how you don't need any AP to do the wraith start after the jungle remake.
You'll be at blue late if you're staying there to auto the blue wraith. And it isn't even the biggest argument against doing wraiths first - the biggest reason is that it's very easy to invade against, since you can't use saplings as level1 wards. It's not a substantial acceleration in exp or gold above the wolves-blue-wraiths start, either - it ranks poorly in a Risk v Reward analysis. You put yourself into a position where you are very ineffective if an invasion comes, for very little gain.
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I've done wraiths -> blue -> wolves -> wraiths without AP and it isn't much of a difference in terms of getting to Blue.
The problem is it requires at least two guys leashing blue for the .5-1s it takes you to get there and that you have no protection against invasion because you are at two points on the map.
You hit lvl 4 at around the same time, so I would only do it if you want the fast lvl 3 for a mid gank AND the enemy jungler clears slow as well AND you don't need more than 1 pre 1:05 sapling to scout what the enemy team movement is.
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I already did talk about why the wraiths start isn't viable all the time. Even prior to any talk about jungle invasions, many people now simply just check your wraiths if you're Maokai to pop your saplings, Just one sapling pop makes the wraith start unviable. But aside from that, if you start with boots then you get to your blue less than 1 second after blue spawns if you do the wraith start, so there really is no actual time delay. That argument only works if you're talking about regrowth openings but regrowth openings are really bad. This was all talked about 1-2 pages ago.
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On September 07 2012 00:46 sylverfyre wrote:Show nested quote +On September 07 2012 00:15 koreasilver wrote:
I just explained two pages ago on how you don't need any AP to do the wraith start after the jungle remake. You'll be at blue late if you're staying there to auto the blue wraith. And it isn't even the biggest argument against doing wraiths first - the biggest reason is that it's very easy to invade against, since you can't use saplings as level1 wards. It's not a substantial acceleration in exp or gold above the wolves-blue-wraiths start, either - it ranks poorly in a Risk v Reward analysis. You put yourself into a position where you are very ineffective if an invasion comes, for very little gain.
dude the biggest reason is that u can do wolves before blue pops and all the wolves ! if u start ghost u wont get the blue one and if u do u will only annoy ur mid who will lose xp.
if u rly want to start ghost, do it at the ennemy, but again just killing the small ones doesnt make a big disadvanteage to the ennemy jungler and if u get the blue one ur mid will be late for xp.
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Any tips for playing Maokai?
How do I get the most out of my ultimate in team fights? In ganks?
Who is my target in team fight? Do I peel from our carries or do I disrupt enemy carry?
I understand WQE-combo when ganking (or WEQ when stun is long enough) but what combos do I use in team fight?
Am I prime initiator during dances or is too risky cause it puts me away from team if I W in?
Is "Always autoattack" how I max utility of my passive in fights?
Any and all insights are appreciated! TY!
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On October 10 2012 21:37 Cuddle wrote:
Any tips for playing Maokai?
How do I get the most out of my ultimate in team fights? In ganks?
Who is my target in team fight? Do I peel from our carries or do I disrupt enemy carry?
I understand WQE-combo when ganking (or WEQ when stun is long enough) but what combos do I use in team fight?
Am I prime initiator during dances or is too risky cause it puts me away from team if I W in?
Is "Always autoattack" how I max utility of my passive in fights?
Any and all insights are appreciated! TY!
1. put ult at where u think the bulk of the engage is gonna happen / around current target of focus by enemy. this could be you after you shurelia+flash/W into an out of position enemy champ. could go something like flash/shurelia+W onto some guy, immediately put R with the circle around you. the decision to place the ult with you at the centre or top/bottom tip of the circle is purely dependent on whether you think the enemies are going to counterengage or run.
2. your target in teamfights is the bulk of the action. Q is a real OP slow/miniknockback so hit as many people as you can with it as often as you can.
3. just mash all buttons no joke. cast skills off cooldown. W->Q targets that require positioning / movement to deal dmg. examples include most bruisers and any priority targets who would be out of range of influencing teamfights if you rooted / slowed them.
4. yeah maokai initiate is really good because of that R and the Q following up the W.
5. yes. you can easily get 1-5 stacks of your passive off depending on the length of teamfights
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On October 10 2012 21:37 Cuddle wrote:
Any tips for playing Maokai?
How do I get the most out of my ultimate in team fights? In ganks?
Who is my target in team fight? Do I peel from our carries or do I disrupt enemy carry?
I understand WQE-combo when ganking (or WEQ when stun is long enough) but what combos do I use in team fight?
Am I prime initiator during dances or is too risky cause it puts me away from team if I W in?
Is "Always autoattack" how I max utility of my passive in fights?
Any and all insights are appreciated! TY!
I always find Mao's passive to be insanely strong in teamfights but usually overlooked.
It heals 7% of max health, with 2.5k hp that's 175hp every second autoattack in teamfights
As for using it in teamfights you can usually just run after the carry and whack them with your tree-arm
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I dunno, I generally prefer sticking to my carries after the initiation and just W any melee trying to engage them and Q anything that is channeling and/or trying to move where I don't want them to be (bruisers near us, carries running away). During the clean-up phase I usually try to W whoever's trying to get away if we won, or I just run, eating the pursuit spells for my carries and WQing anybody diving them (with its short cooldown, Q is very good during chases once you've got some cdr).
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So, top lane tree is pretty crazy strong.
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On April 09 2013 14:13 Tooplark wrote:
So, top lane tree is pretty crazy strong.
OK, I'll bite (can't be worse than the bark!) - running him Cho'Gath style up top? Maxing E or Q? I imagine some sort of RoA/Spirit Visage/Sheen(Iceborn?) thing could work, maybe a Chalice? The S3 jungle hasn't been kind to him, and I miss throwing saplings at people's faces :/
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He's pretty flexible, is the great thing. Max Q first against most people, and E first against anyone who can zone you. Basically you just Q their face every time they get near, and your passive keeps you alive through just about everything.
RoA/Spirit Visage/Sheen is pretty much what I've been building, though not precisely in that order, but you can get pretty creative with your items.
My build order is usually a flask start (works well with teleport), into either fast cata or fast sheen depending on how hard I'm bullying them. If I got Cata, I get Sheen, then finish RoA. Then I get Locket against physical damage or Spirit Visage against magic. Always build Mobos by the way. You can just run at them for easy initiates.
If you want to just throw saplings, try running him 1v2 bot. He's hard to dive, thanks to Q, W, and ult, and he can safely clear waves from a long distance thanks to saps. With proper runes I *think* he can even oneshot the ranged minions at level 3 (level 2 saplings) which is pretty crazy if you ask me.
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You can't one shot the caster minions at level 3 with just Saplings, even if you run a full AP page, Amplifying Tome, and Offensive masteries. However, you can one shot them with Q + Rank 2 E with just AP Glyphs or AP Quints or Offensive Masteries or a Doran's Ring (etc. etc.).
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What about rank 3 saplings?
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On April 10 2013 03:09 sylverfyre wrote:
What about rank 3 saplings?
Not too hard to math out.
Rank 3 sapling does 110(+0.4) impact and 180(+0.6) explosion for 290(+1.0) total damage.
Caster minions have 280 hp(+15/3min) and 0 mr(+2/3min).
Assuming mpen marks and 8% mpen mastery for lane maokai, then:
0-3 min = 1-shot (but doubtful you have rank 3 sapling)
3-6 min = need +5 ap (+1 ap/lvl prerequisite mastery for 8% mpen mastery is enough)
6-9 min = need +20 ap
9-12 min = need +35 ap
12-15 min = need +50 ap
*(not sure if the minion level up starts from when they spawn at 1:30 or actual game time)
After that it will take a little over 15 ap per 3 min since they will have more mr than just mpen marks and 8% will take care of.
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So i love the tree but havent played him S3, due to other OP junglers out there (heca / zac op + nunu / xin) but i want to start playing him more as i beast-mode in ARAM and love his style.
Whats a decent build for mao nowadays? In S2 it was just pure tank with abyssal, im thinking you could do something better in S3?? his numbers seem op.
Something like
Machete +5
Boots + Stone
Seekers
Tabi + Tank stone
Zhonyas
Abyssal
Rylais
Frozen / Athenes
Seems like a good power build to me.
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How in the world are you going to afford to build a NLR on Maokai jungle? Maokai's jungle farming is really really really bad with the current jungle right now. Everything hinges on your ability to make successful ganks right now and you have to accept that you're going to be very poor so you have to make do with cheap cost efficient items.
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Ap -> power -> Jungal, with some AP you can tax your lanes 2-4 CS everytime you gank with an E, its np np.
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Thanks for your completely insightful post, now leave so somebody who isnt a twat can comment, bye.
EDIT: Wont remove it but apologies for the shirty answer.
User was warned for this post
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On May 29 2013 06:07 Capped wrote:
Thanks for your completely insightful post, now leave so somebody who isnt a twat can comment, bye.
1. You're not guaranteed good ganks every game
2. Saving up 1600 for a NDR when you could get pieces for locket, IBG, warmogs, etc is stupid, especially when maokai jungle is a support/tank that is meant to peel and initiate, not to deal dmg. It's extremely unlikely that you'll ever get enough gold at one time to get it, find yourself in a situation where you don't want to be focused, and when your carries don't do enough damage.
3. Maokai stealing CS from your lane every time you go for a gank? You don't steal CS from your lanes unless you're covering it when they go back or you're intentionally pushing the lane to deny the other team CS. The gold you get from doing both is not enough to warrant getting an NDR, since your carries will also be pushing with you or they'll push the lane out before they go back anyways. The only time you'll get a decent amount of gold from covering or pushing is in a noob game or when your team is losing the lanes badly, in which case, you should probably gank it.
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On May 28 2013 23:41 Capped wrote:
Whats a decent build for mao nowadays?
Stop focusing on some retarded thought-up-in-2 seconds build and answer the question please, thanks.
And taking zhonya's out of the equation isnt hard rite
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ancient golem->tabies/mobies->locket->bulwark->spirit visage/randuins/warmogs->spirit visage/randuins/warmogs
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Eh, I like FH rather than SV to finish the CDR unless they're running double AP or something like that, the aura added to your ult really helps in reducing the opposing AD's damage in the late game, and it makes you so much stronger at diving (you should already be able to withstand a burst AP's damage face first at this point anyway).
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Nlr isn't too bad for ap mao though....
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I like my Maokai with the general FH, SV [insert tanky items here] with Liandries if I can. Even just Liandries makes him do pretty good eventual damage, and makes him a lot scarier than just getting Sunfire cape.
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Do people still max e first on jungle Maokai? I've been comparing his q and e a lot more closely, and while e gives more initial burst (provided the sappling actually explodes on your target), the cooldown is lower on his q, has a huge slow that gets better with levels, and a lower cooldown. I feel like I'm constantly out of mana as jungle Mao and getting a couple levels in his e and then maxing his q seems like it would help.
Or maybe a few mana regen/level runes would help? Until I have a spirit item and at least a glacial shroud, his mana pool feels atrociously small. It bothers me a lot, otherwise I would play him more often.
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Where did you see max e first? I've only seen Q max first. It's good for clearing and the slow scales with levels.
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On July 16 2013 22:39 zer0das wrote:
Do people still max e first on jungle Maokai? I've been comparing his q and e a lot more closely, and while e gives more initial burst (provided the sappling actually explodes on your target), the cooldown is lower on his q, has a huge slow that gets better with levels, and a lower cooldown. I feel like I'm constantly out of mana as jungle Mao and getting a couple levels in his e and then maxing his q seems like it would help.
Or maybe a few mana regen/level runes would help? Until I have a spirit item and at least a glacial shroud, his mana pool feels atrociously small. It bothers me a lot, otherwise I would play him more often.
Yeah, E mana cost is very prohibitive for clearing. Q levels are all you need -- E at level 1 then max it last.
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On July 16 2013 22:49 NpG)Explosive wrote:
Where did you see max e first? I've only seen Q max first. It's good for clearing and the slow scales with levels.
People maxed e first like a year or two ago, or at least that was my general impression. I've never really jungled Maokai much though, so I'm not exactly sure when the change happened or if my impression was just flat out wrong. It makes a lot more sense to max q first to me though.
Also looking at a broader swath of guides, it does seem like q max first has become pretty standard. The guide at the beginning has R>E>Q>W, granted its extremely out of date. Oops, I missed someone else's miniguide that was more up to date (although that's like a year old still).
The other thing is, do people really max w over e? You only gain .25 seconds of snare per extra level in w, and you lose out on a ton of extra damage.
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People maxed E first when Maokai first came out because with one cast you do more damage with E than you do with Q. It's also a very satisfying ability.
Then people realized you can cast Q twice for every E, do more damage for the same mana cost, and have a stronger slow for your ganks.
People max W over E because at that point you're starting to transition into mid-game and the difference between a 1 second snare and a 2 second snare is huge when your team has to follow up your initiation.
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At some point you did weird stuff like putting 2 points in E early because it helped kill the camps faster than max Q, but with all the moving around of HP between small monsters and big monsters it ended up being obsolete.
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Def max Q. Low CD, low mana cost, reliable dmg.
That sapling toss needs rework -_- all its good for after the first 5 minutes of jungling is being a 40 second ward with half the vision
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Been going something like
Machete
Stone /Boots2
Golem
Aegis
Then frozen heart/visage whatever depending on game.
seems legit to me
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Sapling toss % hp damage >.<
It gets a lot of damage from AP though, so if you for some reason gets to pick up AP they do stay relevant...
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Just because something doesn't work in the current meta doesn't mean it should get a rework.
Besides, changing saplings would probably nerf my mid Maokai.
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yeah saps are fine, they're the main skill for solo AP maokai (which is sadly underplayed) and they have utility for jungle mao
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What is the main build for top mao?
Seems to be flask or dring start into RoA then straight supporty tank items. I'm guessing 9/21/0 or 0/21/9 masteries, just not sure on runes.
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On August 02 2014 17:42 miicah wrote:
What is the main build for top mao?
Seems to be flask or dring start into RoA then straight supporty tank items. I'm guessing 9/21/0 or 0/21/9 masteries, just not sure on runes.
mpen,armor,(scaling)MR, and quints are your choice tbh. A lot of maokai's damage is in the base values. After RoA I like FH/SV/Banshee's/randuins/locket in some order and combination. Build one for the lane opponent, and then after that build whatever you need to survive. Haven't tried it, but I suppose you could go something like a liandries or void if you want more damage.
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I used to run top Mao in S2 and my build was RoA Sunfire FoN Triforce + some other item in whatever order I wanted after RoA -> Sunfire. It worked really well and I'm assuming I would build the same items and just replace FoN with Visage.
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Maokai top is pretty beastly. Mana isn't a problem anymore and he has a lot of sustain
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Well I think I encountered the first counter to maokai - Cho. Does more damage, and maokai's no MR scaling as a melee doesn't help. Can't push hard enough or harass enough to beat him up early, so cho just sits in the wave and the e damage really adds up. Strong non spell based harass/push beats maokai pretty hard.
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On August 03 2014 18:55 Slayer91 wrote:
nasus
Oh. That too. Both are winnable only with jungler assistance I think. Cho might turn into a farm lane if you can get a fast cowl though, which heavily benefits you.
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i dont know how you can "lose" a lane vs maokai as nasus, he does no damage and you get to free farm until you decide to all in
I guess if you want to farm till like level 9-11 and then go group and try to gank nasus when he pushes 2nd top tower you can go even i guess
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On August 03 2014 19:48 Slayer91 wrote:
i dont know how you can "lose" a lane vs maokai as nasus, he does no damage and you get to free farm until you decide to all in
I guess if you want to farm till like level 9-11 and then go group and try to gank nasus when he pushes 2nd top tower you can go even i guess
Would require at least 2 successful ganks from maokai(first burn TP, second to actually make him lose stuff) before you could win as mao, and even then it'd be hard I think. Can't really burst nasus for much more than a half even if you're a level or two ahead with ult burst, and then everything is down and Q spam alone doesn't even out damage nasus sustain, let alone cowl or flask. You'd probably need morello's on top of roa so that you can quickly burst him below 50%, and then non-stop harass him to actually win with jungler help.
Definitely not a lane you can win without help unless the nasus REALLY sucks(I won once, but the dude went dblade>sheen in this matchup and got spammed out of the lane...)
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On August 03 2014 17:46 Amui wrote:
Well I think I encountered the first counter to maokai - Cho. Does more damage, and maokai's no MR scaling as a melee doesn't help. Can't push hard enough or harass enough to beat him up early, so cho just sits in the wave and the e damage really adds up. Strong non spell based harass/push beats maokai pretty hard.
This
Cho shits on laning mao so hard and he outduels him every time and pushes faster
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Does he really outduel him? I would think if you dodge Cho's rupture it is pretty easy to get free combo in. He can't really out-trade you unless he lands it and it is pretty easy to dodge most of the time.
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If cho maxes E, there's not much mao can do. Don't use your spells and mao gets no sustain
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Most of the time that I play Cho top I run mpen reds and Aspd quints with E max nowadays. It's strong but I'm still pretty sure Maokai will be more useful late game than Cho will be. Cho probably wins lane in a vacuum, though.
Wait. Shit. It's actually time to bring back my RoA -> Triforce build on Chogath.
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Trynd seems like a hard matchup, vs'd one today who tower dives me and doesn't ult so I back and am up a level and a glacial but he still just out trades me so hard. You can't stop him pushing and don't have any kill pressure at all.
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Vayne fucking wrecks you and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it if your jungler isn't camping 24/7
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And then they have no frontline in fights, yay for vayne top
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Note: Your team will also have no frontline because you get evaporated with no items on Mao.
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Is it possible to win vs Ryze? I maxed E and tried my best to farm but he was still up around 30CS on me by 10mins. There was only 1 gank from their J4 and I forced him to blow flash and my jungler came at 6 (he got the kill). I went ROA first but he was still bursting me hard.
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On August 26 2014 08:10 miicah wrote:
Is it possible to win vs Ryze? I maxed E and tried my best to farm but he was still up around 30CS on me by 10mins. There was only 1 gank from their J4 and I forced him to blow flash and my jungler came at 6 (he got the kill). I went ROA first but he was still bursting me hard.
Go qe max q and just push the wave, last hitting as best you can. Ryze can't last hit under turret without spells very well, and every spell used on a creep is one that isn't hitting you.
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I saw a Mao top the other day, he built Tanky AP and just completely tanked the fck out of whatever our team could throw at him. Needless to say, our Pantheon got trashed by him and was more useless than Mao late game and we lost, despite me trying to carry hard.
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Panth actually shits on mao in lane iirc
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Belgium9947 Posts
On August 28 2014 00:37 DrunkenOne wrote:
Panth actually shits on mao in lane iirc
I don't think panth shits on anyone anymore, especially champs that can run x/21/x, teleport and cloth+5
Panth just runs out of mana before you run out of pots, and when ganks happen you're more likely to get an engage on him than the other way around.
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Cloth +5 works great if he starts say d sword but if he just goes flask and 2-3+ mana pots he can spam Q almost nonstop since it only costs 45 mana. If you take it even further and run 21/0/9 for alchemist, start 3 mana pots (maybe wait for a 4th pot so you can get 1 health pot), he can have 528 mana from pots/flask, which is another ~12 spear shots, not counting his actual mana pool and regen. A panth on my team did this the other day against a Mao and seemed like he was wrecking him, but Mao still so useful lategame even if he gets shat on in lane.
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On August 28 2014 22:44 DrunkenOne wrote:
Cloth +5 works great if he starts say d sword but if he just goes flask and 2-3+ mana pots he can spam Q almost nonstop since it only costs 45 mana. If you take it even further and run 21/0/9 for alchemist, start 3 mana pots (maybe wait for a 4th pot so you can get 1 health pot), he can have 528 mana from pots/flask, which is another ~12 spear shots, not counting his actual mana pool and regen. A panth on my team did this the other day against a Mao and seemed like he was wrecking him, but Mao still so useful lategame even if he gets shat on in lane.
That's the problem with Panth nowadays. Even if he wins his lane early he still gets outscaled by pretty much every tank champ. If he doesn't win his lane early he's completely useless too. It's sad because Panth was one of my favorite picks in S1/S2.
I really don't like the meta in top lane nowadays. Shyvana is really good against Maokai though, you can rush BotRK/Visage and he can't do shit to you.
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Garen shits on Mao compared to most tops. The silence is real, Mao loses every trade, and after a couple trades Mao is either zoned from experience range and much resort to using sapling to try and farm (which he doesn't have the mana for) or just going home before garen cries demacia again.
Also darius, but late game Dman a non factor, whereas Garen has tank steroids out the ass that make him impossible to deal with even if you lose lane.
And RaGe it's right, I'd you beating anyone top on Panth right now they doing it wrong.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://www.thegamedude.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Maokai.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ZRqZt.jpg)
