Talk:Maokai/@comment-4843765-20120403091228/@comment-3486816-20120416025914

@Maokai's role isn't to do damage

That depends on the meta of your elo. After a certain point, straight tanks tend to lose their usefulness. People learn to build a bit of defense later in the game no matter who they're playing, and bringing nothing but CC to the field in a late-game setting where no one dies during a CC duration means your usefulness is pretty minimal. Once you get to a stage where everyone plays better (and particularly where people finally have the concept of "don't focus the tank" through their heads), straight tanks tend to lose their role, but tanky dps continue to excel all the more. If the other team starts focusing you again because of your slightly reduced defenses compared to a straight tank build, all the better; you should still be the tankiest (or second tankiest) member of your team, making that largely wasted effort (you might die, but better to have taken the focus from your carries and die than to sit there watching them get killed after you blow your cooldowns). If they don't focus you, you'll have plenty of firepower to punish them with.

The short and long of it is that once you get to the point where people stop focusing you instinctively, you have a little less need for all kinds of defense (they're not focusing you anyways) and a lot more need for other damage/utility. These are some good builds that focus on the damage side of things.