Grasp of Undying vs Aftershock for Maokai

z63XnLCMwX·Dec 10, 2017·1 votes·2,823 views

Right at the beginning of S8, I had played a game against an enemy Maokai who single handed carried the enemy team. Unlike most CC-tanks, he went Grasp instead of Aftershock with a sustain-focused rune page. Inspired, I checked his op.gg copied his rune page, bought Maokai and theory crafted my personal build. So far, it's working decently with 13 wins and 2 losses on the champ and even got me and S+ last game https://imgur.com/a/lQL8A but my OCD strives for min-maxing. Are there any Maokai mains that can give a final verdict of which keystone is better on him?

1 Comments

kaironenDec 10, 20171 votes

I used to play maokai on my alternate account until I pretty much switched to only playing poppy. From my experience, both work, but grasp gives a better early game and it works best vs melee match ups. Aftershock is better for teamfights and sacrifices early game power from grasp. Aftershock is always going to be better vs range match ups since you won't be able to proc grasp of the undying unless you go in, which aftershock will most likely be off cd giving you more than grasp would. Grasp of the undying is probably better in lower elo since you can punish others for stepping too close. Aftershock is probably better into higher elo (mainly high diamond+) since they make less mistakes, meaning they won't step close to you with your grasp of the undying proc up. Also, the sad truth about grasp of undying vs aftershock is that, once and if the pbe changes go live, aftershock will most likely be the only keystone usable on maokai. It will be overall weaker in teamfights and early game. It will only be stronger at split pushing, which maokai isn't meant to be doing.