Why Maokai needs a (mini) rework

Maokai is currently one of the least played champions. This has been the case for a long time now and as someone who mained Maokai for a long time, he isn't really weak compared to other tanks, but he needs some gameplay changes to make him ever worth to play over any other tank.

With his mini-rework in the tank update, Maokai's unique warden-like ult got replaced by a standard tank engage that is similar to many other ultimates. And if you don't think it is meant to engage: the root duration scales from 0.6 s to 2.4 s. That means it is meant to be cast from long range. Problem is, it is slow, so a straigth engage is super easy to dodge. Hit one frontliner and the other enemies can just stay behind him. Flanks work, but feels contradictory. As a tank you usually want to stay with your team. And Maokai is't Shen who can rejoin his team in an instant. To conclude: while being harder to hit than Malphite, Nautilus or Braum ult, Nature's Grasp isn't as rewarding and doesn't feel satisfying IMO.

His natural tankyness is lacking compared to other tanks. Maokai relies on his passive to be tanky except for simply building tank items. Other tanks got damage reduction, shields or free stats. Maokai got healing that requires him to be in auto attack range of enemies (and many meta toplaners like Renekton or Darius can abuse that hard) and it gets hard countered by grievous wounds, something that is easily acquired. Many mages have Morellonomicon as core item and Executioner's calling only cost 800 gold. Tanks are also supposed to counter burst, but if Maokai is't able to auto attack, he has no way to deal with burst. The only time Maokai can fully use his passive is in sustained fights against other tanks or low mobility bruisers. And yes, in the right situations it can feel frustrating to play against. But in other situations it's garbage. Right now it's too much all or nothing.

Finally, some extra skill expression would be welcome to make him more fun and rewarding to play.

Here is my suggestion for a possible rework. It's a concept I further improved after getting some feedback here.

Passive: Water of Life Each second Maokai fills his Water of Life bar with 1. Hitting an enemy champion with an ability or getting hit by an enemy ability grants 15 water of life. Hitting large or epic monsters grants 10 water of life while hitting minions or small monsters grant 5. Upon reaching 100, Maokai heals for a % of his max HP.

Numbers can be changed, but the idea is to remove the necessity to auto attack to use his passive while reducing it's power a little. In addition, you'll be rewarded for hitting abilities instead of just spamming abilities to lower the cooldown.

Q: Bramble Smash Stays the same.

W: Twisted Advance Maokai dashes in the target direction while being unstoppable, damaging and rooting the first 2 enemies hit for 1.25s. Upon hitting at least one enemy with Twisted Advance, its cooldown is lowered by 50%.

Making Twisted Advance a skillshot would make it less frustrating to play against, while making it feel more satisfying. In return, he loses the untargetability (while still being unstoppable) and the cooldown is around double the original cooldown to make him not too safe early while having a great mid-late game. (Looking at you Vladimir.)

E: Sapling Toss Stays largely the same, with some smaller changes. Now has 2 charges, with 2s between casts. Maokai gains 1 sapling every 11s. Nearby stationary saplings get enraged by attacking an enemy champion and will start running in the direction of that champion for 2.5s, seeking out a target before exploding.

Not many changes here, just some more tools to setup ambushes and be more creative than just "please walk into the bush".

R: Nature's Vengeance Maokai slows himself by 50% while creating a vortex around him that reduces the damage from spellcasts originating from enemy champions currently in the zone by 15%. After 7s or upon recasting the ability, the vortex explodes, dealing AoE damage scaling with the amount of damage absorbed during Nature's Vengeance.

My personal wish would be a new ultimate closer to his old ultimate, although a tweaked Nature's Grasp would do as well. In this version, his ult doesn't offer the OP team wide damage reduction, but instead it reduces damage from enemy spellcasts that are in the zone, living up to his fantasy of a spell eating tank while also making the CC of the rest of his kit serve a clear goal. Dive the backline, stick to a high damage caster, ult and lock him in it.

This is just a concept, so it's far from perfect. Feel free to give any feedback, as long as it is constructive please.

Thanks for reading.