I think Maokai should have had some of his reliability reworked in the tank rework

Malicious Metal·Sep 25, 2017·6 votes·328 views

He's the poster boy of the "brainless" tank as most of his CC is point and click and on a low cool down. And while W certainly is one of the easiest forms of CC to apply I think his Q, Bramble smash, should have been reworked too.

In its current form it just does too much: -It deals a lot of damage on a medium-low cd -it has cc attached to it -it has not a lot of skill expression

Honestly, I thought tank damage was supposed to become less reliable so why did Maokai keep most of his unintuitive damage patterns and too reliable cc abilities while also adding a huge AoE root to his kit?

11 Comments

SalsonSep 25, 20171 votes

Well they 'tried' to make his E and R less reliable. Didn't really do much, as W has the dumbest part of his kit.

RookPusherSep 25, 20171 votes

Hey, you want to give him back his old ult? I'm all for it. I'm a Maokai main and I don't think he's that easy. Poke champs ruin my life (gnar).

Anyway, he was nerfed. W use to do damage based on your health - that's gone. And I personally think his ult kinda sucks.

RalanrSep 25, 20171 votes

Maokai's old ult was the primary reason why he was a generic tank you could pick into any comp.

Turns out it wasn't the only reason.

RookPusherSep 25, 20171 votes

That makes him sound incredibly OP. But I don't remember his old form being on a must-ban list.

RalanrSep 25, 20171 votes

Basically it's kinda just a worse version of now, he was too reliable.

RookPusherSep 25, 20171 votes

This disappoints me because I love him, but even I couldn't max out 75% wins on him. Maybe I'm just crap but I also Support with him mostly.

NyarlathοtepSep 25, 20171 votes

Actually he has only one point and click cc. And usually tanks want to have reliable cc. You know to be threat.

Sahn UzalSep 25, 20171 votes

I'd like them to change up his Q a bit, Allow players to charge it, tapping it would basically behave like his live Q, but charging it like Galio W could increase the knockup range (Maxing out at the projectile's max range.)

HalcyonDwellerSep 25, 20171 votes

That's a cool idea! I'd be a little worried about that much range fully charged, but making it charge and expand the range would be very cool.

What about if it just expanded the knockup range down the skillsot's line the longer it charged?

Madsin25Sep 25, 20171 votes

I believe they wanted maoki to do a few things differently.

His Ult. They wanted him to have more cc instead of damage reduction. Also shifting some of the dmg reduction from his ult into more healing from his passive.
Counterplay to his %hp point and click root by switching it over to saplings that HAVE to be in bushes. (also the sapling nerf before he was reworked was never reverted)

So basically nerfed him to the ground.

HalcyonDwellerSep 25, 20171 votes

Some of his reliability has been nerfed with the rework, as others already demonstrated.

I agree though, I would have liked to see more of his kit change from reliable to skill-expressive.

Personally I think that the saplings should not detonate automatically on hit. Rather, the explosion should be back-loaded; made so that the ticks of the DoT apply first, then the main damage happens at the end.

Additionally, I believe it would be more skill expressive if the Saplings didn't deal full damage unless Maokai landed another ability or attack on the target. Like priming an explosive.

lastly, I really wish they had made it interact with Maokai's passive more, such as when he auto-attacks a target with a sapling attached to them to proc his passive without changing its current cooldown (basically a free proc) once per sapling, or something like that.