Talk:Maokai/@comment-74.96.1.65-20110629231737/@comment-99.4.76.45-20110702203357

Jungle Maokai is rather fast, and his ganking potential is quite good as well. He can be counter-jungled a bit easier than say Nocturne or Nunu however, so he's "risky" in that sense, but with a good pay-off.

As far as Saplings vs. Arcane Smash...

The main arguments are that Saplings are unreliable to hit with, and that Saplings are "too expensive."

There are a couple of considerations though:

1. If building AP, Saplings have far better Ratios, 2. It isn't that hard to hit with both halves of Saplings, especially if combined with TA, even against targets with very good boots. A lot of it involves predicting the enemy's movements outside of TA. Personally, I find the wind-up and travel time (and range) on ArcS to make it about as hard to hit with (and that's at all). 3. Mana to damage ratio actually favors Saplings until Rank 5 (not counting AP). 4. When Jungling, Arcane Smashes (and cheaper Saplings) enables you to spam abilities more, thus triggering your passive and making jungling safer. Not to mention the mini-knock also helps decrease incoming damage. Arcane Smash, while less efficient than Sapling, also has higher DPS, so with, for example, Blue buff, you won't really care much, after level 1 (where you need saplings to start). 5. Both abilities are at risk of pushing the lane through AoE damage, and careful placement of either can minimize it, but it is easier for Saplings to be manipulated into the minion line, but on the other hand a person can hide in their minion line and force Smash to push the line that way.

Ultimately, my opinion is that when laning, Sapling is better because of efficiency, range, and burst, and if you want vision, you should buy wards, and use Saplings only to supplement those Wards, rather than try to replace them.

For Jungling, I can see it going either way. Sapling is better burst and more efficient, which can be better for ganking, but Smash allows for faster and safer jungling (not the least of which because the slow can help you escape a counter-jungle gank if you need to).