Talk:Maokai/@comment-24.23.136.250-20110614055843/@comment-3238314-20110623221049

There are a few things about that, tough.

First off, yes. He doesn't deal as much damage with his abilities as other tanky chars, and i'd really want Q to be given a 0.55 or 0.6 scaling. But disregarding that, there are other things Maokai is good at:
 * While Maokai deals little damage with his W, if you build him ap and tanky, and work with ~40% cdr, he can apply a knock back slow of nearly 50% every 3.6 seconds. This works extremely well with enemy champs that have channeling, or even auto attackers. Give them the finger in a pretty nice aoe every 3.6 seconds. profit.
 * Altough i didn't confirm this myself, and i can't because EU servers didn't run AT F**KING ALL today, Maokai's ultimate negates raw damage, not already mitigated damage. I will need to run some numbers for this, tough, so don't consider it much. Instead, consider that for you're squishies, it's still a good amount of extra mitigation. I drop it when all people have comitted, or when we're pushing turrets. It takes some good decision skills, but usually I can pull it off nicely.
 * With Maokai, and good team coordination, you're immune to ganks and ambushes. You can scout bushes from a huge distance, and if you leave it at rank 1, you can always have it up a gank spot. This is huge utility.
 * His healing is really great in team fights if you auto attack. It's incredible sustenance, because if you manage to pull it off well, you may heal 21% or more of your life back. Combined with tanky items' that's close to retarded.
 * I think he's easily the best ganking tank because you can't escape his W by flashing, and with CDR, you can pretty much keep your target in constant crowd control, and chase it over impassable terrain with E + W if it flashes.
 * While Q does not have a good scaling, it has good CD. This makes, along with a high base damage, a very good trinity user.

If played right, he is a really great tank, and I pick him over others usually.