People might find Maokai boring but he's the perfect example of a balanced tank
Yes he's mostly point and click and relatively fail safe but that's basically tanks most redeeming trait: whether starved or fed, they do basically the same thing.
Poppy and to a lesser extent Nautilus, they do this and more just because their damage is much higher while their CC makes them scale really well. Nautilus is a weaker example of this because he doesn't have the damage output or durability of poppy but like her, he violates the same thing: when he's good, there's no reason to play anything else that's melee. They do bruiser levels of damage while having tank CC and durability. Thats just not balanced, that's never going to be balanced. Not on champions that are designed to be useful regardless of what happens in a game. Their carry ceiling is brought down in exchange for relevance no matter what, that's the mark of a good tank. Poppy has this trait while still being insanely strong in damage to boot and if she gets fed, she can walk into your team and ignore your damage while killing your backline.
Tanks aren't supposed to be divers. Sure, they can do it if it's there but not divers in the sense that they dive and solo the enemy backline. Poppy does this a ton, Nautilus is pretty guilty of this too when he's strong but Maokai has never had this ability unless uber fed by mid game. Otherwise, he simply doesn't have enough sustained damage to kill a carry and that's exactly what makes him a balanced tank, despite his ever present point and click hard CC and damage reduction. And he's able to do this while having shoving power/trading power in lane without feeling like complete horseshit as opposed to poppy mashing Q on you or Nautilus mashing E on you and DPSing you down while his W is up. But that's fine, I'd take that point and click fuckery over tanks who straight up bully most bruisers any day of the week.
So in short, that's Poppy.
Poppy doesn't care about balance.
Don't be like Poppy, be like Maokai
Maokai is a tree
