Some thoughts on new Maokai

I want to start by saying I think you accomplished exactly what you wanted with Maokai - he is no longer the go-to must pick tank; at least it feels that way. So I'll break down what I like and what I don't like.

What I like:

•His healing feels better

In lane phase, it feels like he doesn't quite have the sustain he once had. But outside of lane phase with spirit visage? Holy fuck, it feels like I heal for so much more now. Maybe it's not much different, maybe it's even worse but I can't shake this feeling that his healing is far more noticeable than it used to be. What's the drawback? Because old Maokai pressed R to rely on his tankiness, new Maokai doesn't have that. He has to be in your face to be tanky otherwise kiting him actually feels like real counterplay as opposed to shooting at a brick wall of stats. It makes him feel more interactive and that's a fantastic thing.

•His E poke in lane feels much stronger

I don't think I'm even going to make W second anymore. I tried Q > E max and my lane poke felt incredibly satisfying. If there's an area to adjust, it's probably his Es damage. It starts to feel silly how much damage my E does with a little AP. It also makes bush cheese hilarious but that's not something id overly concern myself with. In some scenarios, I could even see an E max first how on Maokai.

•I love his ults theme

I'll get to his ult in a second but in terms of themes, it's one of the best thematic ults in the game now. It makes sense, it feels like a crazed tree unleashing his angry root children army on your family for burning down his forest and killing Bambies parents.

Here's what I don't like:

•His ult takes way too long to launch

I understand why it has its duration. I understand why it has to be slow moving but I don't like how long it actually takes to boot up. I realize this was intended because you don't want insta cc Maokai becoming a thing, but if Maokai feels too weak, this could be an area to address. It wouldn't take much.

•it's actually difficult to notice my ultimate

No seriously, when I use my ult, half the time I can't even tell it's gone off. Obviously I see it on cooldown but I would love for the animation to be more noticeable. Maybe it was just the meowkai skin, I don't know. It just didn't seem to jump out at me the way ultimates do in terms of animations. By the way, the army of cats attacking you is adorably hilarious.

•I don't like Ws shorter duration

It lost its damage, ult has a long wind up time and he's not reducing damage for his entire team the way he once did. I'm fine with shorter duration roots early game but I don't think adding a few tenths of a second late game will hurt anything. It should feel like an impactful spell late game and it didn't really feel that great to. Again, if Maokai turns out to be too weak, perhaps this or his ult could be an area of change.

My thoughts are this: Maokai is strong as fuck at the moment. He didn't really lose out on damage in my opinion. His durability is down in general but I suspect when he's in his right environment, he'd be incredibly hard to kill through all the healing. I didn't try many of the new tank items on him but I suspect gargoyle stoneplate will be menacing on him.

Overall I'd say the rework was successful. I know people will probably hate it and hate on Riot for it but Riot was absolutely right about old Maokai. He was too general, he did everything too well and his old kit had very little actual gameplay. I like his kit, it has its drawbacks and it's not universally good like it once was - but make no mistake, I still think it's pretty damn good.

Feel free to kill me now