Talk:Maokai/@comment-3532889-20111209233658

Been playing with alternative ways to build mao lately. Particularly, I've taken to the notion can do better with more damage on them. The thing is, besides his Ult, Mao poses little threat after his initial burst. As straight tank, i've had a fair few games where they pass through my burst and knock out teammates left and right. So (assuming i'm fed like i almost always am) to negate this, i've crafted a build to both better suit the jungle, especially later on, and to make him a more dangerous tank on the whole. Assuming you jungle, I've been going Regrowth Pendant > Phils Stone > Merc Treads > RoA as my standard core, then following that, my completed build looks like: RoA, Trinity, Merc Treads, Warmogs, Atmas, and a Reverie. The result is a mao that is much faster (easier to manuever in jungle, teamfights, and reaching teamfights), more cc (phage), and far more burst. While you do sacrifice some damage-soaking for this, with the advent of the warmogs meta, and Mao's extraordinary ult, you aren't really losing much.

Initially, I was not going to add fatmogs, but considering a realization i had awhile back, it actually has amazing synergy. The thing is, Mao's ult does more damage based on damage absorbed. What this means is, Mao's ult actually does LESS damage the more armor and MR you build. with the addition of Sheen, i can have the ult going for much longer in teamfights, making it more interesting to use, and generally more effective.

Course, I am losing out on a few quirks, but thats somewhat returned through my masteries. Main thing i've lost is the Frozen Heart, which gives a huge chunk of CDR and it's passive. Overall I'm content with it in it's current state, first try in ranked, I went 9-3-16, and in a normal i managed 10-2-28. Will keep using it until i lose, where I more fully appreciate the sacrifices.