Talk:Maokai/@comment-25562166-20150319235500/@comment-26227036-20150327051640

I remember the Oddone playing Maokai on his stream once before the rework. He made it very clear that he was severely underpowered at the time, particularly with his manacosts and impractical ultimate. Oddone is a former professional player, so I value his opinion a bit more than some random commenters...

In response to your comment about him being fundamentally broken, I should remind you that he has two major weaknesses. The first is that he has no real escapes. If he's good he might be able to ward a jungle camp and W to it, but otherwise he has nothing to fall back on except to peel for himself with Q and E, which doesn't usually do the job. The second weakness is that he has no ability to pressure his lane opponents. He's a strong laner, but not strong enough to deny a Nasus/Yasuo/Poppy from farming. The best he can do is prevent champions like Riven from snowballing by being immensely tanky. This is very exploitable in draft pick.