I have to say it’s rather great to see one of my favorite characters seeing so much play at the professional level. However, whereas a majority of Maokai players used to play him in the Jungle, we’ve seen him played exclusively top during his tenure and there is a good reason for that as he has bullied his way into being a highly contested pick up there. With great sustain and damage in lane coupled with tankiness and utility for teamfights, Maokai can hang with the big boys top.

But why haven’t we seen him attempted in the Jungle since his dominance in Season 3? He still has one of the best ganks in the game with Twisted Advance/Arcane Smash, and the additional slow on his sapling only makes his attempts even more deadly. You’d think, with so much emphasis placed on the pick/ban phase of professional play, that he’d see play in the Jungle if only to allow him to be picked early in the draft and not get horrendously countered in lane. Someone picks a bad matchup for the tree? Shove him in the Jungle and pick Jax to punish them for their arrogance.

['maokai' by Juyoung Ku]

The Problems of Jungle Maokai

Maokai is a fine Jungler. As previously mentioned, he has some of the deadliest ganks in the game, and with Arcane Smash his clear time isn’t as horrific as some people may believe. However, in the professional game, he finds himself edged out by picks such as Lee Sin and Elise (who tend to edge out every Jungle pick that isn’t ridiculously powerful) because Maokai out of the Jungle doesn’t do nearly as much damage in the mid-game as those picks. This isn’t important for teamfights, because Maokai’s goal is to provide a massive tanky cushion for his team, but it allows the enemy to freely abuse Maokai in his own jungle.

However, I can see someone still picking Maokai with the fears of Elise and Lee Sin mitigated – you can either ban out those two characters or you can aggressively ward your half of the Jungle. The other major issue is that Maokai fulfills the same role if he’s top or Jungle – it just happens that he’s better at that role when he’s top. Unlike other “two position” characters like Lulu, Maokai’s job doesn’t change when he goes top – he remains a massive tanky cushion who picks off people. However, due to the increase in gold he gets from the toplane, he performs this job more effectively than his Jungle counterpart. Rather than going a Spirit of the Ancient Golem, he can go into Rod of Ages and deal some significant damage during the fights.

If we look at the mid-game builds of Maokai based on his position, Jungle Maokai tends to go to Quill Coat into Spirit of the Ancient Golem in an attempt to both mitigate the damage from Maokai’s slow early clear and to get early survivability for his attempted ganks. Top lane Maokai goes into an early Rod of Ages, and while it doesn’t have the armor and sustain of the SotAG, it has a much higher health bonus and Sap Magic is active during his time in lane. The costs of these two builds are actually rather close, the higher cost of the RoA build facilitated by the higher gold income of the lane.

While the Tree isn't completely out of his traditional role in Jungle, we've seen Top be the dominant lane. Jungle Mao has become niche, although not as niche as AP Mid Maokai. [Runecraft Maokai Concept by Chronomorph]

So if we look at a full exchange of Maokai’s abilities at level 6, assuming no absorbed damage off of Maelstrom and a [3/1/1/1] build for abilities, we see that Jungle Maokai is horrendously outmatched by his lane sibling. Lane Maokai does 494 alongside 10.8 percent of the target’s maximum health, while Jungle Maokai does 380 alongside 9 percent of the target’s maximum health. While this damage difference isn't as significant during ganks (as Maokai's role during such a thing is more to lock down the target than it is to damage them), it is incredibly significant during the first Dragon fight at around twelve minutes. The lower base health and damage means its that much more likely that someone is able to cut down Maokai, which will lead to a Dragon for the opposing side.

And this really is the reason that two-position characters are rare in competitive play right now, as a character that is being put into two positions can either completely shift their playstyle and their role in a team (like Lulu) or is considered absurdly powerful and teams are trying to fit them into whatever hole they can find (like Kayle and Zilean).

For characters that would have the same role, it’s often in the team’s best interest to put them in the position where they get a better gold flow, while putting a character that can still perform without money in the economy role. There’s also a second issue, in that early Jungle items seldom provide much help during the game’s early teamfights, and for a midgame powerhouse like Maokai, that’s wasting much of his potential.

When a Tree Falls into Lane

There is a possible fix for the damage issues that Jungle Maokai has early, which is building Spirit of the Spectral Wraith instead of SotAG, but SotSW has the issue of not contributing to Maokai’s survivability and its fully stacked form only matches RoA’s. So in a competitive environment when one is attempting to eke out every advantage one can get, it should not be surprising that Maokai has been transplanted to the top lane. This becomes more apparent when looking at Maokai's Jungle clear - while our own Mylixia and Crumbzz don't rate Maokai too horribly, its apparent that his initial Jungle clear contributes to that rating. Once the tree gets a few levels, Arcane Smash does very decent amounts of damage, but a full initial clear on Maokai can take up to 30 seconds longer than a Lee or Elise clear.

While this might not be life or death in solo-queue, competitive teams will take advantage of this immediately by taking the "far" camps from Maokai. Maokai's relatively low individual damage might also see other Junglers freely attempt to duel him in his own Jungle as well, but this risk is mitigated by the lockdown Maokai can provide when his teammates are collapsing in on the invader.

However, this doesn’t mean that Maokai is a poor Jungle pick in solo-queue, as his Jungle form is still a popular pick. When Maokai hits the Rift outside the competitive world, he’s in the Jungle around forty percent of the time. He builds SotAG 36.55% of the time, and while it has a lower win percentage of when Maokai builds RoA [55.16 compared to 54.45] it still sees considerable success due to Maokai’s overall strength as a character. And its this strength that will see him moved back into the Jungle when Riot inevitiably decides to reduce the damage that Maokai can provide in the early game.