Talk:Maokai/@comment-4018089-20110711222056/@comment-3486816-20110712075413

Maokai's ult isn't a get-out-of-jail-free card like Alistar's, so you still need to focus more on the tanky side of tanky mage than you do (or did) with AP alistar. If you look a few posts down you'll see someone who seems to work well with what's largely a spellvamp build, but I haven't tested that myself. And no, his Q does not suck. If anything, it's his saplings that suck. If you're going to go for a full squishy AP build on him (which will only allow you to really use saplings and his ult; the rest is too risky 90% of the time), that'd basically mean spamming saplings at the enemy, which means not spamming them into bushes to check for flanks, which is where they really belong. If you balance tankiness and AP nicely (which is expensive but pretty easy to itemize for and extremely effective), your Q will act as both strong AoE spammable (capped or high cdr is pretty much essential on any maokai build, imo) damage, a badass knockup slow, and a lich bane/trinity force proc'er.

In short, yes, his AP is awesome, but no, he's not AP Alistar. He needs a lot more defensive building than Alistar does.