Nerfing Maokai Intelligently

I think we all know that ever since his rework, Maokai has been considered to be completely overpowered. He's one of many who have filled the void of toplane, but his ability to make many champs almost completely uplayable due to his nonexistant amount of counters. He's been killing diversity and even Riot knows it.

Since he became a dominant force in the LCS, Riot has been nerfing Maokai's signature ability- his ultimate. First a time cap of ten seconds, then a damage cap. Overall, his ultimate has been nerfed substantially. But for some reason, Maokai remains a dominant pick. Why? Because his ultimate was never the issue. Maokai should be allowed to be a powerful teamfighter, tank, and disruptor. What he should NOT be able to do is bully his opponents out of lane as well.

So, my conclusion was that the damage on Maokai's Q on E abilities was far to high to be allowed on a tank. Q lets him have free waveclear and poke with a low cost and cooldown, while his E deals the same damage as Gragas' fully charged Q, even though it is FAR easier to land. So here are the nerfs;

Arcane Smash: Now deals 75% damage in the line skillshot. Deals original damage in the knockback AOE.

Sapling Toss: Damage of the explosion portion has been reduced by 20, and now deals 70% damage to minions (not monsters).

Vengeful Malestorm: No longer has a cap.

The reasoning here being that Maokai's pushing power and earlygame damage are terrifying, but his lategame should bs good.

And a note: The goal of these nerfs is NOT to make Maokai weak. Instead, its to shift him into a passive farmer that thrives lategame instead of being an aggressive bully dealing 120 damage with a rank 1 ability, but has a heavily nerfed ult.