Talk:Maokai/@comment-84.145.207.58-20110605003342/@comment-3486816-20110607005151

ult is more for absorbing damage and quickly creating a short-lived good zone than for dishing it out; that's just a plus. Also, if you wait until both teams have committed or you drop it at a tower, you can keep people in it pretty well. W imo is actually his biggest problem as well as one of his greatest skills, as the travel speed and animation are ridiculously slow and your target isn't snared until you get to them... that puts you in some pretty bad situations when you use it on someone who ran in to poke and then ran well behind a turret in the time it took you to W them. E should only be leveled once early game (possibly more if in a solo or 1v2 lane, still playing around with that) and primarily used for zoning, warding, and brushchecking, not so much for damage as that'll eat your mana. If both teams are content to poke each other in the dance before the teamfight for an extended period of time, it can come in handy late game. A well-placed one can also secure a kill. His strength is probably more that he's a good laning tank, but that comes at the cost of better cc's. He doesn't have any combo that guarantees a win in a teamfight as do Amumu and Galio, and his cc isn't quite strong enough to absolutely demolish a single target as can Rammus, but his laning, farming, and damage are all good. Confused that you see him as fotm, though, I rarely see him myself other than when I play him.