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Hey! I'm a Grandmaster Maokai OTP and I have a few ideas how to make this champion more interesting

Aizo·9/11/2019, 5:25:23 PM·32 votes·14,186 views

Hey I'm back again. I'm looking on how to make maokai a much more interesting and skill based champion than he is right now.

First things first, this is a very long post! If you don't have the time, willingness, or frankly care enough to read I'll have a TL:DR at the bottom, but it doesn't really have a lot in it because most of the post comes from ideas on how to fix things.

First to start with my credibility and who I am. I have nearly 250 Maokai games played in soloque this season, and I play him in the toplane. To my knowledge I am one of the only Maokai players above D2 that plays him in the toplane whereas the other Tree enthusiasts play him in jungle and support. I am not currently rated as #1 Maokai in NA but I consistently am rated as the #1 Maokai player in NA. I am active on the Maokai Mains discord and I stream lots of soloque playing almost nothing but maokai

OPGG

League Of Graphs

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I think we can all agree that maokai has had a pretty severe fall from his glory days when he was impactful enough to earn himself a victorious skin back in the day. And we should start by looking at what made him so good back then compared to now.

The first big thing was that front to back teamfighting was much more common back then and this was something that tanks were required for this, and maokai was the most reliable and effective of all tanks. But the real power of maokai came from his old ultimate.... Vengeful Maelstrom. This ability was absolutely broken.

Active: Maokai creates a magical vortex around himself for up to 10 seconds, reducing non-turret damage dealt to himself and allies in the vortex by 20% for the duration and storing double the amount absorbed, capping at Vengeful Maelstrom's base damage.
At the end of its duration or upon reactivating Vengeful Maelstrom, Maokai detonates the vortex, dealing magic damage to all nearby enemies.

Ignoring the damage that it did, this ability provided an aura effect similar to adaptive helm, but unlike adaptive helm it reduced physical and magical damage by 20% which is insane. And then yeah it also did a pretty nuts amount of damage too.

Another incredibly powerful part of old maokai was his old W - Twisted advance

Active: Maokai dashes to the target enemy, becoming untargetable for the duration, dealing magic damage on arrival (capped at 300 against minions and monsters) and briefly rooting them.
Magic Damage: 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13% (+ 3% per 100 AP) of target's maximum health
Root Duration: 1 / 1.25 / 1.5 / 1.75 / 2

The reliability of a point and click untargetable dash root is very powerful in itself, but also dealing up to 13% max HP as magic damage with no AP at all is crazy. For context vayne's max level silver bolts deal 14% max HP damage, granted hers is true damage.

His old Q and his current Q are the same ability except instead of being an arcane smash its a bramble smash :O

And the difference between old saplings and current saplings is the % max HP damage was put on the saplings and they deal double damage and have a larger explode in the bushes.

Old Saplings

Active: Maokai flings a Sapling to the target location, remaining there and granting sight around itself. Sapling Duration: 40 / 45 / 50 / 55 / 60 Upon spotting an enemy, the Sapling chases them for up to 2.5 seconds, exploding upon impact or at the end of its duration, dealing magic damage to > all nearby enemies upon detonation and slowing them by 50% for 1 second. Magic Damage: 80 / 120 / 160 / 200 / 240 (+ 60% AP)

Current Saplings

Active: Maokai flings a Sapling to the target location, remaining there for 30 seconds and granting sight around itself. Saplings tether to nearby enemies, chasing them for up to 2.5 seconds, exploding upon impact or at the end of its duration, dealing magic damage to >all nearby enemies upon detonation, capped at 300 against non-champions, and slowing them by 35% for 2 seconds. **Magic Damage:**25 / 50 / 75 / 100 / 125 (+ 7 / 7.25 / 7.5 / 7.75 / 8% (+ 1% per 100 AP) of target's maximum health) Saplings placed in bush instead have 30 (+ 2.5% bonus health) duration and deal double damage over 2 seconds to all enemies hit, capped at 600 >against non-champions. **Total Magic Damage:**50 / 100 / 150 / 200 / 250 (+ 14 / 14.5 / 15 / 15.5 / 16% (+ 2% per 100 AP) of target's maximum health)

So lets analyze these. Maokai's old saplings used to be able to deal quite significant damage to squishy players even if he built only a small amount of AP because the AP scaling increased the base damage. With his current saplings you need to build 100 AP to increase a non-bush sapling's damage by 1% max HP. If we use this example against say an ADC who largely will have under 2000 HP an extra 1% damage is 20 damage and if its a bush sapling the extra damage from his AP alone would be 40. Compared to his old saplings which with 100 AP would deal an extra 72 damage.

Now to be clear, his current saplings are stronger than his old saplings were because of the fact you can double their damage by placing them in a bush. I far, far, far prefer his current iteration of saplings because it gives him an interesting unique identity of being stronger near bushes similar to how rengar and ivern are.

Moving on to his passive there is not a massive difference between his old passive and his new passive except in numbers and how it comes off cooldown.

Old passive

Maokai draws energy from spells cast in his vicinity, gaining a charge whenever a nearby champion or himself uses an ability (stacks up to 5 times) Upon reaching 5 charges, Maokai's next basic attack consumes them all to heal him for 5 / 6 / 7% maximum health.

Current Passive

Innate: Each time Maokai casts an ability or is struck by an enemy's ability, Sap Magic's cooldown is reduced by 4 seconds. Periodically, Maokai's next basic attack, after a 0.25-seconds delay, against a non-structure heals him for 5 − 65 (based on level) (+ 6% − 13% (based >on level) maximum health). Sap Magic will not activate if Maokai is above 95% maximum health.

Lets break down the difference. Maokai's old passive used to work similar to kassadin's force pulse ability where so long as he's spamming abilities and there's a big teamfight going on he'll be able to passive heal up. His current passive requires him to spam abilities, and get hit by enemy abilities to proc it a lot which brings up a weird fighting style where in certain situations it is better to get hit by an ability than to dodge it because then it will bring your passive back up so you can heal. On top of this certain abilities will reduce maokai's passive cooldown while others don't. For an example of abilities that don't reduce maokai's passive cooldown would be rumble's flamespitter and this makes sense as its not so much as being struck by an ability but more of being in the field of a damage source. But did you know, standing behind baron to take the extra damage from its spike auto attacks is sometimes more beneficial on maokai because it reduces his passive cooldown? There are many little inconsistencies like this. And while the healing numbers are larger currently than they used to be there is also much more available grevious wounds now then there was in the past, which leads me to my next point.

So I know there are people out there who think that maokai is in a fine state and doesn't really need any improvements because he is exactly what you think of when you picture a tank. A simple champ who has 4 CC abilities. But I ask you how Maokai can be the ONLY champion on OP.GG's list without enough sample size to show stats for. If I told you Riot was releasing a champion with lots of healing, a knockback/slow, an untargetable dash/root, long range vision control that also deals %max HP damage and slows, and a lanewide root you'd probably think "Wow that sounds like a lot of power for one champion to have" Until you realize that all of these moves are crippled by the fact of how slow moving every ability is. The biggest offender of being a slow ability is Maokai's ultimate.

Active: Maokai summons a colossal wall of 5 thorny brambles that slowly advances forward, each stopping at the first enemy champion they collide >with. Each thorny bramble deals magic damage and roots for 0.6 − 2.4 (based on distance traveled) seconds. **Magic Damage:**150 / 225 / 300 (+ 75% AP)

So yes. This ability is quite large. And if you hit someone with it at max range that's a whole 2.4 seconds of root (which is less than a tier 3 morgana Q BTW). The clear argument is that "oh but it can hit 5 people!" But in practice if you throw Maokai's ultimate out 1 person (probably a tank) will tank the center branch of the ult and the other 4 teammates simply stand behind him and are unaffected. Or, what happens more often for me is that everyone dodges the ability by slowly walking to the side or just COMPLETELY outruns it because of how abysmally slow it is. The range is 3000 units but it takes nearly 7 seconds to reach those 3000 units. If an enemy is standing 1500 units away and they have tier upgraded boots (not including the free ass boot bonus or cloud drakes) they can outrun the ability entirely.

So what do I think are the flaws of current maokai. He is too bland in terms of what he does. He is purely CC and that is it. And his CC is the worst kind, its stick CC. So if he's on you, he's going to stay on you... forever. This is where he is incredibly difficult to balance because he is a statbot. His major counterplay right now is understanding his W engage range is and just not entering it.

Another one of his major flaws is how readily available grevious wounds is in the game. While this is just my personal opinion I think grevious wounds should be a harder to reach effect on all of its paths. 800g for AD users, and 1000g for tanks to get bramble is simply not right. I think that the approach of having it on a fully completed item the way it is on morellosis the way to go. Essentially I think bramble should be removed from executioners and bramble vest, but kept on mortal reminder and thormail. But that's a bit on an aside.

How do I think we can fix the issues of maokai to make him more viable? I'll start with slight iterations of what they could change in his current abilities to make him more viable and lay them out for a small change to each ability.

P - Sap Magic - No longer reduce cooldown by casting abilities, but by hitting abilities on champions. Including multiple hits like sapling is 1 tick reduced, bush sapling is 3 ticks reduced, q reduces x ticks for x champions hit, ultimate reduces x ticks for x champions it.

This would bring more skill to Maokai while also being a buff. I think if this change was implemented with its current cooldown it would be too strong but the idea is mostly what I'm looking for here. If we take away the security of simply spamming abilities away to get big heals off, and push it towards having to play around hitting your abilities on multiple champions, or hitting bush saplings it would make him better. Ideally this should make him weaker in 1v1 fights because he doesn't have multiple people to hit spells on, but increase his teamfight potential because he can heal more. Because people who play maokai currently (at least me) live for that fantasy fight where you almost die over and over but are slipping in and out getting clutch heals in fights.

Q - Bramble Smash - Increase projectile range slightly.

This would make him be able to more reliably farm in bad toplane matchups of which there are many. Tiny quality of life buff.

W - Twisted Advance - Remove untargetability, remove targeted ability, make it a directed dash that can go over walls and if he collides with an enemy he roots them (or even roots them and units around them in a very short radius.)

Removing the untargetability of maokai, and removing it being a targeted dash makes there be far more counterplay to it. As it currently stands if maokai's w starts going you will not dodge it (unless if blitzcrank uses his E auto on you which yanks you out of your W for some reason RIOT FIX THIS BUG PLEASE) If you try to flash away from it, it won't work he'll follow you wherever you go and root you and now you have no flash. By making it a dash similar to gragas E, or sejuani Q, not only does it give him all of those cool mechanical genius moments of doing a dash flash or a flash dash, but it gives him less reliability on his engage, while also giving him more reliability on his escapes or chasedowns. It makes him more interesting, more fun to play, and more fun to play against because you know you can at least dodge the root if he uses it.

E - Sapling Toss - If a sapling is thrown in a bush or at any time runs through a bush it has increased movespeed and damage

By the increased damage I mean what it currently has damage-wise. I think saplings damage is in a great spot. What I mean for this to be is, if you throw a sapling and it isn't in a brush when it lands, but then it chases a target, and goes through a bush then it becomes an empowered sapling. And I think if bush saplings have increased movespeed when coming out of brushes it further drives home the champion fantasy of Nature empowerment. It brings nuance to the game when you know to stay away from bushes because you're facing Maokai, the twisted treant, nature's wrath.

R - Nature's Grasp - Increase missile speed of roots - OR - Make the roots not go away when they hit a champion similar to how nami ult works, but make it so you can only get hit once by the ability.

His current ultimate is GREAT... if it manages to hit. And the amount of times it hits vs fizzles out doing nothing is staggering. If the missile speed was increased it would be a fearsome ability. Or if it didn't remove a branch for each target hit then one player couldn't simply block it for the rest of the team. (Also this would mean you wouldn't get hit by it multiple times because for some reason most people don't know you can be hit by maokai's current ultimate multiple times.) Yes, I would like to re-iterate that. Maokai's current ultimate... moves so slow... that you can get hit by it, rooted, and then keep walking, and if you willingly walk into another branch you can get hit by it again. That's how slow this ability moves.

Or another way I think that Maokai could be changed is to change how his current ultimate works. Instead of being a longer wider nami wave root. Imagine this. Maokai shoots out a root to a target location rooting anything in its path (think about the width of a nidalee spear with the speed of a caitlyn Q) and after a .25 second delay it explodes in a * or star, or leaf, or something pattern damaging and rooting anything hit. Now this is clearly a very simple not well thought out idea, but just because he's a big tree doesn't mean all of his abilities have to be extremely slow moving and extremely easy to dodge. If a character doesn't feel threatening they won't be played. Malphite himself is dangerous because of his ultimate. If maokai had a smaller more targeted CC that hits fewer people but is at least more of a guarantee then he would see more play and by making it a dodgeable skillshot with a delay it still keeps counterplay.

Now to try out an ultimate more similar to his old "Guardian" style ultimate. Think of something like this.

Maokai creates a field moving around himself (just like his old ultimate's field) where enemies are slowed while in the field, allies have increased movement speed in this field (including maokai) and after 5 seconds the field explodes dealing damage and shortly rooting any enemy caught inside. Or maokai can recast the ability anytime after 1 second to deal less damage and root for less time.)

This creates a similar effect to Nunu's current snowball toss. It gives him the increased teamfighting power makes him be able to speed his team into, or out of fights, and crowd control his enemies in a fight. I would like to point out that this would not have any damage reduction put into it like his old ultimate because that would be broken. Just a speed boost / slow field and a small amount of damage and root on explosion similar to his old ultimate explosion.

Now I think that maokai could be a really fun champion and I'm sure the boys at riot have way cooler ideas than I do. But as someone who mains a champion that isn't played enough to have stats shown for him, I'm just throwing things out there that I feel would keep the identity of the champion while making him both viable, and far more fun to play and to play against.

For those of you who read to here, I am very impressed and flattered you read all of that about what most consider to be the most boring champion in the game. Thank you for reading and please talk to me about what you think I'll be responding to every comment and question I receive!

TL:DR Maokai is in a terrible state currently due to having no identity and being too reliant on stats alone and can be fixed by changing some of his abilities to have more counterplay to them which gives room for potential power on abilities for a skill player to use wisely

65 Comments

Ragnaveil9/11/2019, 8:16:49 PM10 votes

How about Mao gets his old ult back? The current ult is pretty worthless with all the mobility and shit that dodges it in the game. At least he can be durable if his old one returns (and gets tuned to not be strong as shit)

PlsRitoRepairS109/11/2019, 7:54:38 PM4 votes

"So I know there are people out there who think that maokai is in a fine state and doesn't really need any improvements because he is exactly what you think of when you picture a tank. A simple champ who has 4 CC abilities. But I ask you how Maokai can be the ONLY champion on OP.GG's list without enough sample size to show stats for. If I told you Riot was releasing a champion with lots of healing, a knockback/slow, an untargetable dash/root, long range vision control that also deals %max HP damage and slows, and a lanewide root you'd probably think "Wow that sounds like a lot of power for one champion to have" Until you realize that all of these moves are crippled by the fact of how slow moving every ability is. The biggest offender of being a slow ability is Maokai's ultimate."

This single paragraph is enough to upvote thread to oblivion, even if people might disagree with You, your post is very precious voice in "game-state" debate. Like srsly... Well, I'm not OTP, or main, but I have 7th mastery on Maokai, and I like my tanks, so I do agree in some points. Yes, he is in very bad state(especially on toplane), because of meta, items and whole state of game. Yeah, he is pretty simple. Yup, percentage dmg on his saplings, and their synergy with bushes is awesome.

I like the idea od securing woods by kamikaze-saplings and charging into enemies to perma-root them. For example his Q can have increased range(QoL), and saplings can be run faster in bushes. I do understand your suggestion of W's remake, but I'm not convinced... at least yet. Also his passive, I got idea too, but I'm not sure if this would be better.

But imho, they should mini-rework his ult, to transform this into more reliable combat-tool, like Malphite's ult or something. Brambles 5 -> 3 CC duration 0.6-2.4 -> 1.5 Range 3000 -> 1000 Speed increased x2.5(or even more)

  • Brambles doesn't disappear after landing.
  • Maybe reduction of ap ratio, but additional mr/armor/hp scaling?

Dunno maybe my idea is dumb(probably is), but I do believe that after remaking his ult and increasing his stats(ranges, effects on basic spells) they could start reducing dmg in game, and reworking tank items&runes into real tools for tanks? At this moment I feel like playing pure-tank is just inting... Of course there are exceptions like Nunu or Seju, but overall:

  • tank runes don't scale, they are just pure strenghts in early for offesnive champions
  • tank items are not interesting, they are just a mini-answers for big threads, and whenever they are buffed to the state of "solid itemst" then they're abused to the oblivion by bruisers or champions with highs bases(Tank Ekko, Tank Fizz, Tank Rengar, Tank Kha'Zix, etc.), so they have to work in different way(imho Gargoyle is great idea of item for tanks... expect fact that this one is pretty trashy).
ZT Xperimentor9/11/2019, 6:18:07 PM4 votes

I'd have to disagree with his twisted advance being the worst for being an inescapable cc combo, there's several champions who can punish him for being close, and a few more than can separate him even farther from his team if he tries to engage. Most are either juggernauts or scrimmagers, but there's some mages and marksmen can do these too such as; ahri, azir, caitlyn, ezreal, lissandra, malzahar, quinn, tristana, vayne & ziggs. Besides two of his three crowd controls are just roots, that only stops movement and such abilities, enemies can still attack and cast other spells.

Got a question for you though, what would you think about reverting him? Before his rework and removal of his old ultimate that is.

LegacyDAP9/12/2019, 4:10:55 AM3 votes

Surprised anybody is able to make this dogshit champion work nowadays. Loved him in Season 4 and Season 5. He was my go to pick for ranked and I loved him. Feels like a shadow of his old self now with the ult being useless and passive changes. Congrats on getting to Grandmaster with him.

Bârd9/11/2019, 9:14:21 PM3 votes

Those W changes are terrible.

  • He'd be far too easy to lane as, since he now has an instant cast skillshot dash he can use to get out of any danger.
  • He loses almost all of current Maokai's skill expression (predicting mobility spells to follow the enemy, dodging key spells with the invulnerability)
  • More mobility creep... yay.

The passive change also sucks. It cripples his late game by making it so he no longer counters spell spam.

GelsominoKiller9/11/2019, 11:32:27 PM3 votes

I respect you for playing a toplane tank. They're a mith at this point... How many years did this damage meta last?

That said, I dislike your proposed changes, especially the skillshot, targetable W. For as weird as it sounds, to me Maokai is its W. That simple, super satisfying spell is what I (used to) play him for.

My personal proposal is to keep it simple and familiar, because in all honesty there's nothing wrong in Maokai's base kit. His inability to survive the lane or the teamfights is a direct consequence of the damage meta, in which a tank gets bursted anyway, and is thus required to deal damage not to be useless.

The only thing I'd change is his ultimate. I want the original back, even if its only a %dmg reduction aura. Maybe like this:

Maokai gets 20% less damage and allies around him half the amount. He stores the damage mitigated that way. After 5s or on recast he drops the aura zone on the ground. That lasts for 3s and after that enemies take damage for the amount stored, and allies get healed for the same amount.

Then I would rework his current, utterly useless ultimate in a mechanic similar to corkis package. Maokai gets a seed after tot minutes into the game, and he can plant it preventively. After 20-30s the current ultimate starts from set location. This would help Maokai set up teamfights and objectives. With enough planning, it can be game changing and become a nice skill test.

SolarisCorvus9/12/2019, 10:19:43 AM3 votes

Honestly i love how maokai as is right now but ig he could use some quality of life changes. All the suggested changes are pretty good sounding except the W change.

Last thing riot should be doing is bloating more characters with mobility. Maokai’s w now is cool because even though its a dash it has the requirement of you using it on an enemy and it having a relatively short range. So it gives maokai a means to actually stay on top of someone without letting him dash all over the place to dodge skill shots (unless you can target an enemy).

I really think for the ult making the roots go faster would be nice or if they wanted to bring back the old ult but adjust its utility. I think if riot did bring back the old ult instead of damage reduction it would have to be something else but what that might be I really dont know since whatever form of damage prevention it is would probably feel terrible to fight against as well as making maokai too strong and requiring he lose power from other parts of his kit. Maybe it could be that when maokai ults he stores all the damage his teammates and himself has taken and then when it ends he returns it as damage to the enemy and healing to allies. But that would probably be hated to play against so in this aspect i really dont know.

Padoµch9/12/2019, 11:19:59 AM3 votes

Hello, I played a lot of the old Maokai, and when I found out he is a great AP midlaner I played just that. I remember destroying fizz otp and he accused me of hacking, hehe, fun times.. I wish I could play him ap again, being strong. AP now has no meaning, because as you stated, going ap will not let me one shot the adc, or anyone really.

The King Diamond9/12/2019, 2:07:06 PM3 votes

Give him his old R. Thats all.

Hi im 129/11/2019, 9:50:51 PM2 votes

my question is why are you playing maokai though? you would be better off playing most other champions and its not like his exactly the epitome of fun either.

Doge20209/12/2019, 11:39:51 PM2 votes

Honestly I don’t exactly like the change to the W, I think all of the changes together on it is rather overdoing it. I want to propose two possible changes, they take bits and pieces from your change.

  1. The first option would still remove the targeted portion of the ability and it keeps the untargetability, the range is maybe increased but the root duration would decrease based on how far you travel (I’m thinking max duration of 2 sec and minimum of 1 sec)

  2. This option keeps the targeted cast of twisted advance but there is a travel range added. This “travel range” defines how far maokai will chase the target before the ability ends, much like a dash.

Idk about the untargetability, if you had to remove it then I think you should make it unstoppable. The idea that comes into my mind when thinking of this ability is like a giant force that can’t be stopped until it reaches its target/goal. (I know this idea sounds exactly like his current R, had to change my image up so I hopefully wouldn’t confuse you) In my opinion the devs made this idea real by making this ability untargetable, but I think we can achieve the same idea by making it unstoppable. This change will add counterplay by letting enemy players damage maokai, but the change keeps some of its former elements.

I think that you should keep his W a targeted ability, in my opinion it’s good for a champion kit to have like one or two targeted abilities in it. I think having a lot of skill-shot abilities makes the champ harder to play for some people (tho it probably won’t be a problem for you lol) and unnecessarily increases the skill cap of a champ. Generally tanks had more simpler kits and are easier to learn/play, I think keeping the target portion will keep maokai in that range.

Your changes certainly add more depth and are good, I just wanted to add my personal ideas to one of the changes.

BigFBear9/13/2019, 3:27:08 AM1 votes

Rioters aren't reading this boards. You can try it on Reddit or write directly to a designer via Twitter. I just tell you because of your effort that is wasted on this place.

Silverman439/12/2019, 6:44:46 PM1 votes

Hello there!

First of all, I want to thank you for spreading this message. There are almost no Maokai players left and as someone who mained him since I started playing his current state makes me sad. I agree with most most of your points here, but let me give some of my own insights/ideas.

Passive: Your idea is really close to what I came up with in a rework concept. I would love the cooldown reduction by hitting enemies. But I had the idea to change his passive to a "Waters of Life" bar that he fills and he fills it more by hitting champions, than large monsters and the least from small monsters/minions. When the bar is full he automatically heals without the need to auto attack. Like, it feels contradictory to have to auto attack in order to have any sustain while he can get bullied easily early on by doing so or while trying to make an escape. He also gets kited so easily without any form of tankyness or sustain in certain situations. In return for the reliability it could be made a little weaker.

Q: A little bigger AoE would be nice, but I don't feel it needs major changes right now.

W: Your proposal seems good. With its current form it is annoying to play against and we all know how it feels to W into the whole enemy team because your target just flashed. A note I would add is to double the base cooldown of it, but reduce it by 50% whenever you hit an enemy with it. Otherwise it would give him a low cooldown escape and thus too safe early for a mid-lategame monster.

Personally I would love a version of his W where you can steer like Nunu & Willumps snowball Yuumi's Q or Sion's ult. It would probably be too OP though.

E: Extra MS for saplings in bushes seems only logical. Besides that I would love the possibility to do something with stationary saplings besides them being low-budget wards. Like, when you hit an enemy champion with an ability, nearby stationary saplings start to run in that direction, seeking out a target or exploding after the usual 2.5s.

R: I would personally prefer an ultimate more in the direction of his old ultimate instead of his current ult. My idea is to give him a self-slow while creating a zone around him that reduces ability-based damage from enemy champions currently in the zone. After the duration ends or by recasting this ability, the zone detonates and deals damage scaling with the amount of damage he absorbed. This would secure his identity as a spell-eating tank. I'm not certain whether it would be too OP or not, as their should still be counterplay with mobility and CC. And it isn't a team wide buff like before, more of a debuff to enemies.

Thanks for reading and congratz on being one of the best Maokai players out there!Maokai