For a tree, Maokai sure doesn’t sure doesn’t settle his roots down for long. Long known as an underrepresented jungler, he’s found a new home in the top lane in recent weeks. Thanks to his immense tankiness and his ability to completely disrupt, well, anything that his opponents are trying to do, he’s rapidly become a highly contested pick. In fact, in his first four appearances in the LCS, he recorded a perfect record, proving his worth from the top lane.
To understand The Twisted Treant’s power, let’s take a look at a few EU LCS playoff series to find out exactly what he can do.
Grasping roots
Thanks to his origins as a lockdown-heavy jungler, Maokai excels at making things happen in lanes outside of his own. Take a look at fredy122’s excellent Teleport to the bottom lane in Game 1 of the EU LCS Summer Quarterfinals.
Note how far away CandyPanda and nRated were when he comes in. They’re nearly half a lane away, and fredy122 just dives face first into an Alistar with Unbreakable Will and the highly mobile Lucian. Thanks to the root on his Twisted Advance, the slow on his Sapling toss, and the slow
and knockback on his Arcane Smash, he’s able to hold both Creaton and Jree in a disadvantageous position until the rest of his team shows up.
And look at how much HP he walks away from the battle with. Thanks to the 20% damage reduction on his ultimate Vengeful Maelstrom, he’s able to take some hits without worry.
Big brawler
Maokai’s ultimate is extremely useful for small skirmishes, but when truly shines when he enters a teamfight. You see, his damage reduction aura doesn’t just affect him, it affects his teammates too. He serves as a protective aura, making sure his teammates don’t go down when he’s around.
Perhaps the best examples of this come from Wickd’s performance on the tree in Alliance’s second game against Fnatic in the EU LCS Summer Finals.
When fighting in the confined space of the jungle, Wickd is able to have his aura touching as many people as possible. Despite sOAZ’s Swain, Cyandide’s Evelynn, and Rekkles’ Lucian throwing out tons of AOE damage, Alliance is safe and sound in Vengeful Maelstrom. Once they’ve slain three members of Fnatic, their health bars are high enough to go snag a Baron kill.
It’s also good for sieges! Typically, when defending against a team attempting to take an Inhibitor Turret, a team will try to poke down the assaulting team in order to scare them off from a tower dive.
Watch how, once he’s turned on his ultimate, Wickd wanders around his teammates, soaking up any damage that may be coming their way. He’s not throwing out any abilities for much of the fight, essentially waiting for any engagements that may come from the opposing team. If they had, you can be sure that he’d immediately lock them down to make sure they don’t get to his dual AD carries. Often, the threat of a Maokai is all you need.
Chopping him down
Obviously, Maokai makes everyone on his team very hard to kill. So how do you deal with him? How do you make sure he isn’t able to wreak havoc on your entire squad? For the first few weeks he made appearances on the European scene, it looked like there wasn’t an easy way to do so.
However, as Alliance proved in Game 1 of the EU LCS Summer Finals, the solution is actually fairly simple: Make sure he never gets anywhere close to his team.
Alliance does an impeccable job of applying the pressure of Alistar, Fizz, and Nami to keep sOAZ’s Maokai away from his team. He’s forced to stand to the side, away from the squishier members of his teammates to make sure Alliance doesn’t land a particularly devastating bit of AoE crowd control, rendering him useless for the initial moments of the fight.
As a result, Nyph is able to toss out a perfect Tidal Wave, further splitting the Fnatic squad and freeing up Alliance to make a heavy engage. With everyone diving the back line, there’s very little he can do. They’ve got to run, and he struggles to keep up and chooses to lock down Nyph. Because he’s so split off, Alliance simply kills him immediately, removing the Maokai threat from the map. Once he’s gone, Alliance easily grabs the turret they came for.
While Maokai is undeniably a strong pick coming from the top lane, he certainly has ways of being dealt with. As the race to Worlds heats up, we’ll likely be seeing more from the tree. It just remains to be seen if those playing him will find as much success as when he first burst onto the scene.
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