In Patch 12.17, Maokai received a monumental rework — finally clarifying his playstyle and returning to his design philosophy instead of the weird support mage he had become. It’s known that the reworks were a huge buff, shifting Maokai to viability in Top, Jungle, and Support and resulting in some absolutely insane clips. Given the density of changes (and tuning in 12.18), I thought it’d be helpful to break down exactly what changed about each ability and then give you a sense of his overall play pattern.

Passive - Sap Magic

One of the primary targets with this rework was to move Maokai back into jungling viability, aiming to push him out of solely being able to play as a support. To facilitate this, Maokai’s healing passive now gets its CD reduced by basic attacks and abilities from large monsters, and his base heal is higher early (with a lower max health ratio late). Giving him a significantly healthier early jungle clear means that he’s more easily able to take advantage of his guaranteed early CC with ganks, which allows him to jungle far better than before.

The heal changes early are also massive for letting him lane again – Maokai used to be a staple in Top lane, but as he slowly lost his ability to trade with his Q and empowered auto, his utility overpowered his tanking capabilities. By shifting power back to his early healing, Maokai once again synergizes well with Grasp of the Undying, because he now receives healing from multiple sources over the course of lengthened trades.

Q - Bramble Smash

The changes to Maokai’s Q were some of the most impactful to the overall change in his play patter, finally moving him away from the Sapling-centric mage that he had become. The % maximum HP ratios that were previously on his E have now moved to his Q, letting him brawl far more effectively and consistently than before. When so much of his damage was indexed into his E, which is highly conditional (especially with the bush empowerment), he struggled to commit to lengthy fights because he couldn’t guarantee his damage.

Just like his passive, the base damage for this ability is up early, and it now deals bonus damage against monsters — the first being a good way to ensure that Maokai can’t be steamrolled in the early game and the second being enough to fully justify him as a jungler. Because so much of Maokai’s power is reliant on his own maximum health, he struggled to leverage any dueling power early (because without gold, his ratios were largely useless), but now he’s been given the damage to get him through the more brutal laning phase in top lane.

E - Sapling Toss

Sapling Toss has been the core of Maokai’s identity for a long time, with each of his abilities previously serving to lock up his enemies long enough for them to get blown up by a barrage of saplings from a nearby bush. Usually, this ability felt janky and hard to play against, especially with its bloated ratios and absurd scaling — Saplings can’t be killed even if you can see them, so when his damage was loaded onto them, the counterplay was essentially area avoidance. Additionally, Maokai could scale that damage off his own tankiness, picking up a lot of “safer” damage while continuing to build as a tank.

To deal with this, Sapling Toss gave its max health ratios to Maokai’s Q, and had its base damages pumped up to give a slight compensation. Now, Maokai needs to be in the middle of the fight to take advantage of his max health scalings, giving more of a sense of counterplay to the “Tank that can kill you” fantasy. Sapling Toss’ base damages and AP scalings have risen dramatically as well, intending to allow players to opt into a hybrid AP style if they feel that the zone control from Maokai’s “deadly bush” playstyle could be useful.

R - Twisted Advance

Maokai’s ultimate hasn’t actually changed a lot — the only real addition was a movement speed buff after Twisted Advance roots a champion. This lets the ult serve as a true engagement tool for Maokai, letting him more easily capitalize off the vulnerability of the enemy ensnared by the branches. Previously, if Maokai would go for a particularly long range ult – or one over terrain – he could struggle to chain his CC properly. Additionally, it rewards actually hitting Maokai ult instead of using it as a zoning tool (the missiles also move significantly faster at early levels, which can be impactful before enemies pick up movement speed from items).

The Overall Effect

Like all of Riot’s recent reworks and champion updates, the changes are centered around a particular target theme, centralizing the playstyle of the champion in a way that more accurately achieves the fantasy outlined by its design. For example, Ahri (a soul sucking temptress in the lore) went from a mix of Assassin and Mage with odd, punishing mobility to a mage designed around that mobility, looking to play around it to whittle down her enemies and actually healing off enemies she kills. I touched on the new identity for Maokai over the course of the piece, but I’ll recap for a more general perspective.

Maokai now looks to brawl far more, returning to playing in lanes because of some boosted early stats in health and damage — his Q now accounts for a lot of his trading power, and his passive heal is much easier to achieve. With some additional monster damage ratios, he’s now able to jungle pretty effectively, with decent sustain and a lot of potency in his early game ganks. Generally, Maokai likely wants to build like a true tank and stay in the face of the enemy, acting as the disruptive engage champion that he was always meant to be (instead of the budget Teemo he had become).