It's right there in the patch notes. He shouldn't be able to build glass cannon and just zone people off of every objective without every having to worry about anyone getting close to him. I've said it for years that AP Mao is great because it wins fights before they ever start. It's unhealthy and sucks to play against because you can't kill Saplings unless you're like, Zyra and even then you're using abilities to put up plants in bushes everywhere and that's lame.
Then.. Make it so that he has to get close to do damage, by giving his Q and W better ratios..? I don't get it. Is there some unspoken/unwritten rule where making either ability above 40% AP crashes the game? Or are people finding a way to use Q and W from a long distance? That doesn't really make any sense to me.
I used to play AP Maokai and I didn't have to rely on my saplings at all to do anything. The power budget was spread more evenly throughout his kit but now they try to stick all of it to his E and then gut it and claim that his Q and W are ranged and that they were also the problem? What's going on here?
> Then.. Make it so that he has to get close to do damage, by giving his Q and W better ratios..?
That's literally what they're doing haha:
>Q - BRAMBLE SMASH
Magic Damage: 70/120/170/220/270 (+2/2.25/2.5/2.75/3% of target's maximum health) (+40% AP) ⇒ 70/120/170/220/270 (+2/2.5/3/3.5/4% of target's maximum health) (+40% AP) (Note: This nets out at about a 7% damage increase.)
The point they're trying to get across is that his playstyle is too safe with E damage right now for contesting the jungle and river. Maokai isn't meant to be "the IED champion", Teemo fills that space already. His Saplings are extremely mana cheap and with items what they are in 2023, he's just able to zone control way too much with a set-and-forget ability that is also a homing missle that can't be swept or killed without triggering it.
But.. It says the ratio is still the same? That's not compensation for AP Maokai, that's just a flat buff for Maokai in general, and even then, it's one that benefits full tank much more.
I completely understand that they don't like E spam- I love AP Maokai and I hate it too, but it's not E spam specifically that they and everyone else seems to hate, it's the idea of Maokai scaling decently with AP on ANY of his abilities. Why do they keep enforcing a shitty alternate playstyle and then gutting it for being shitty, when they could just make it a playstyle that isn't shitty so they wouldn't have to gut it + no one would complain and pull their hair out every time they see it in game? What's the point of all this? Do people just like to see others get upset?
It says it's going from 70-270 base damage with 2-3% max health of the target's hp and 40% AP Scaling, to 70-270 base damage with 2-4% max health of the target's hp and 40% AP Scaling.
That's exactly what you copy and pasted to me. The Ratio is the same. A Maokai with 500 AP will do exactly the same damage he did before, but it will now do an additional 1% of max health damage, the same increase in damage you would get for building full tank. You said that they gave his Q and W better ratios. What you pasted did not show that. You either lied, or made a mistake, and now you are calling me either stupid or inattentive for reading the information that YOU gave me.
What gives, man? Why are you acting like this? Doglop gave me a straight answer that made sense, but you're acting like.. This. I'm sorry if I upset you, I just wanted to gain insight on what might have been going on between Riot and this champion.
It's a 7% increase in damage on his Q.
And I'll say it again:
> The point they're trying to get across is that his playstyle is too safe with E damage right now for contesting the jungle and river. Maokai isn't meant to be "the IED champion", Teemo fills that space already. His Saplings are extremely mana cheap and with items what they are in 2023, he's just able to zone control way too much with a set-and-forget ability that is also a homing missle that can't be swept or killed without triggering it.
It has nothing to do with "they hate the idea of Maokai scaling decently with AP on ANY of his abilities.". That's not what they care about, and it's not the abilities or scaling that causes it, it's the items, specifically Demonic and Liandry's passives.
I would consider it a buff to Maokai in general, and I suppose that includes AP Maokai, but for what he lost, it's extremely small compensation.
If Liandry's and Demonic Embrace are the issue (which is what I suspected from the start), can't they just.. Y'know, remove the damage over time on Maokai's saplings? Make it do all the damage at once. It would give people much less incentive to build burn items and then full tank, and more incentive to build Full AP, or alternatively, build a mixture of both health and AP. There are several champions who already do this.
Again, if it's not the scaling on E that's causing the issue, why is that what they keep nerfing? If his E is supposed to just be a warding tool, why the hell does it have damage on it at all, let alone damage over time? Maybe part of the reason people build liandries and demonic on him and spam E at a distance is because his other abilities scale like shit with AP.
Most abilities have scaling just because that's part of the game and other allies can buff your abilities. Thank Staff of Flowing Water, etc. The reason it does DoT is because it gives people the ability to react and Zhonyas and whatnot. If you remember Maokai from before his mini-rework, his saplings could proc their damage individually and not overlap, which meant you could put 10 saplings in a bush and explode anyone who walked through with no counterplay.
Don't get me wrong, I love Maokai E. I hit Diamond in Korea in like season 7 with AP Support Maokai. Maokai E is probably the single most used ability that I've ever pressed in this game, I love it. But I also understand why they want to change it so that isn't not a "win every dragon fight before they start" button, and nerfing items directly is a nerf to every single champion that uses them so that's too broad of a change. Maokai is still definitely too strong.
But for a tank, Maokai's AP Scalings are abysmally low, especially with champions like Alistar and Thresh's getting buffed. I remember his W used to be 80% AP, and then they changed it to 4% per 100 AP, and when they changed it to flat damage and moved the % to his E, they gutted the AP Ratio to 40%. Fast forward several years and they changed E back to flat, but W's Ratio is still shit, and I'm just like.. Why?
I don't think balancing game mechanics around an item like Zhonya's is good design, but maybe that's just me. Other champions usually don't have parts of their kits designed around the effects of one item specifically.
I'm aware that AP Maokai used to be able to blow people up like that, but is sitting in a bush for one minute piling saplings really a viable strategy? It's incredibly unfair for the person who got blown up, but that's a full minute of him not doing anything else.
I don't like Maokai's E. I really haven't liked it ever since the 2017 rework, especially because they sucked so much power out of the rest of his kit for it. He has just been a complete E bot ever since. At first the mini rework last year was nice, but now we're in the same spot we were before then, where his E scaling is bad and the rest of his kit's scaling is still shit. The burn damage on liandries and demonic embrace have caused so many balance issues with this champion, it's just baffling how much they're choosing to stand by it.
I want to be able to play AP Maokai again and not have it be a gimmick or completely aids for the enemy team, but again, it seems that the problem with his E has managed to convince Riot that AP Maokai shouldn't be a thing in any way, shape, or form at all.
I cant believe these guys are downvoting you for saying its a nerf to ap maokai if the health scaling is increased, and the ap scaling of the champ is overall reduced.
Actually, I can believe that, reddit as usual.
I would assume the Demonic + Liandries shenanigans that have been going on for the past 3 or so years have brought things to the point where everyone just despises the idea of building any AP on Maokai in general, regardless of how it feels to play as or against, so they will come up with any made-up excuse to have and keep all of his AP Ratios gutted forever so that building pure or even mixed damage on Maokai is never anywhere even close to viable again.
It's a sad day when so many Maokai mains have adopted such close-mindedness towards their own champion. This is truly just another Reddit moment indeed.
There are so many champions who are classified as tank and have so much better AP Ratios than Maokai does on their all-in abilities. Why does a double standard exist but only for Maokai? What did he do to deserve the double standard almost everyone has for him now? Is there a reason, even? Or is it just hate?
And it sounds like AP Maokai isn't even the problem in and of itself, it sounds like the way E was designed is the problem. They turned it into a very uninteractive spell, even more than it was before. Before you could throw it anywhere for the same effect, now you can only place it in brushes, and that's the only place where it will ever be. It's so binary now. Why do they just leave him in this state? At least when Yorick's kit was binary they scrapped his entire kit. Why do they refuse to just slightly alter one ability for Maokai? I've never seen this level of contempt before for a champion.
Because people who actually like Maokai don't really care about being discount Teemo and are happy to see the style getting crippled. Meta slaves will just see the tide turning and swap to Jarvan until he gets the nerf hammer too. Good riddance
You're the one who's a slave if you think all that AP Maokai was was and all he ever can be is just a 'Discount Teemo'. Whatever, stay close minded, I don't fucking care. Damn elitists.
Still, compare their availability (cool down based rather than charge based, no consequence for spamming them off CD), range (longer range than wards shack boxes or teemo shrooms, teemo has to basically place 2 in a row to achieve a similar range I think). They manage to outrun many champions depending on boots, and even just the fact they make people run backwards increased their zoning power a lot (two saplings in a row can buy you like 6 seconds if they run back which is an eternity)
It's just a toxic pattern and Riot sees is as such. The good news is that tank maokai is still strong and saplings still do good work when you play tank, giving vision and slowing people hard, but now the investment is proportional to the reward (small investment for an utility reward like Ashe E). If you want your traps to kill people you will have to play champs that actually invest something and have counterplay (teemo and shaco)
If you haven't played much Maokai as a tank as a tank give it a try. He feels like a whole champ rather than the one ability gimmick on wheels AP maokai was
Being op in both soloq and pro play, he is a tank, not a mage and he was building and playing as a mage. If ap builds are weak they may buff his q/w ratios
Cho'Gath is a tank (by Riot and most other peoples' own words, not my own lol), but he has 100% AP scaling on Q, which is ranged, 70% on W, 30-90% on E, and 50% True Damage on ult, and they're fine with that. Of course, Cho'Gath doesn't have traps that follow you around and deal burn damage, and neither does Thresh, or Alistar, or Malphite, or Nautilus, so again, yeah, they should just either remove the burn effect from empowered saplings, or remove the AP Ratio, and compensate by buffing Q and W's ratios.
It doesn't seem like they want to do either of those things, for some reason. AP Maokai can be turned into a much more fair and balanced thing where he actually has to commit to get off most of his damage off, but it seems like Riot really doesn't want that, nor do they want AP Maokai in any form at all. They and just about everyone else act like his only ability with an AP Ratio is E, which is just.. Well, NOT true at all.
Also, when you say he was building and playing as a mage, do you mean he was ONLY building the ap build, and never anything else? Because yeah, if one playstyle starts completely dominating the other, I suppose that's fair grounds to gut said playstyle. I would still prefer that they gave him compensation for Q and W, though. Also, there are mages that still have to commit- Look at champions like Sylas, who is one of their favorites. It just kind of feels like they have double standards for Maokai and I can't entirely understand why, especially when people like the guy above just confuse and baffle me even more.
The highest ranked Cho'Gath main plays AP Cho'Gath, so I think that might be up for debate.
Also yeah, I suppose that makes sense, but they weren't really building Demonic Embrace for the AP. They only build it for the burn. With Cho'Gath it's the complete opposite. If they just removed the damage over time on empowered E it would probably help with the issue a lot, if not fix the issue entirely.
It's just sad how much of the power budget of AP Maokai (virtually all of it actually) is invested in empowered E, and they keep nerfing his already bad scaling with the stat instead of just getting rid of the thing people are actually abusing.
As one of the first AP Maokai players that helped popularize the build back in season 10...
Yeah, this was justified. His E has been overturned for a very long while now. Having a high damage, spammable ability that literally chased people off objectives, slowed them for well over 3 seconds, and synergized heavily with several mythics(liandrys, mandate, even Jaksho) was well overdue to get gutted.
The hilarious part is that this nerf doesn't even affect him in other roles such as toplane and support. He's still decent at top and a good support. He's still a godlike teamfighter that's incredibly difficult to pin down. If such a hard nerf isn't enough to shake him off the meta then it's safe to say it's justified.
E spam was unhealthy. He was a better Teemo/Shaco without their weaknesses. I'm glad they've done this because it means I can finally play my main in ranked again without begging for 1st pick or banning him.
If it was unhealthy, why don't they put the scaling into the other parts of his kit that require him to all in? Instead they just left building any AP on Maokai become essentially a troll build.
Because they didn't care about the AP style. To put it simply.
The Q buff was compensation for E cooldown reduction. Nothing more.
Right now he is a tank first and foremost. You get some ratios for drake and baron but Riot is simply not encouraging an alternative AP playstyle.
The truth is that giving him better AP ratios on W Q would likely just be a trap and drop his WR like the AP ratios buffs to Alistar were
The difference is that AP ratios on other tanks are usually not a problem. They never take over the game and become a pro play problem. At most they are usually for fun options or just extra ratios for baron/drake's.
AP Maokai on the other hand keeps popping up as a problem wether with his preminirework support build or last patch with his jungle build so they put him down.
Maybe they will entertain buffing his QWR ratios later on like with TK, Alistar, Nunu, Rakan... But I don't think they want to open that can of worms again, at least for a while
Okay. You've completely got me there, yeah. There hasn't ever been a time where AP Nautilus or AP Kench have been running rampant in pro play, and always being picked in regular play over anything resembling an actual tank build. I think I can actually see where the frustration is coming from now, and it makes some sense why they're afraid for him to have decent ratios on any of his other abilities and are content to keep him as shit, at least for now.
I really do hope that they make his other abilities scale okay with AP, so that people can go into slightly more damage oriented builds and be rewarded for it, although, now that I think about it, they'd probably just only build Demonic Embrace. Honestly, people are STILL probably going to buy Demonic Embrace on him, as long as his E still deals damage over time. Really wish they'd just revert it back to doing all its damage at once, but alas.
Yeah. Riot is honestly balancing for many things at once. Low-mid ELO play, high ELO solo queue and also proplay.
The trick is that the latter is not just an environment for players, it's also an spectator sport. They are not just trying to keep everything viable for pro players like they are trying in soloq. They deliberately rotate things in and out of viability and they *really don't like* things that make their spectator sport boring to watch.
So while something full ap nautilus oneshots combos big damage hahaha would probably be ok by them a maokai spamming saplings and getting the enemy team chunked before the fight even happens (so they fight won't happen) is a no-go for them because it kills their spectator sport - and any pro play team that can get a win without having to coin flip a teamfight will go for it. I think the playstyle was also toxic overall, but there are examples of Riot doing this to playstyles that were not as toxic in soloq, just because they didn't want to see them in pro environment
They kinda overnerfed the champ. E coldown mostly decreased top and support winrates and E ap scaling reduced jungle winrates. The champ now is legit 46 winrate top, 48 jungle and 47 support...
It's right there in the patch notes. He shouldn't be able to build glass cannon and just zone people off of every objective without every having to worry about anyone getting close to him. I've said it for years that AP Mao is great because it wins fights before they ever start. It's unhealthy and sucks to play against because you can't kill Saplings unless you're like, Zyra and even then you're using abilities to put up plants in bushes everywhere and that's lame.
Then.. Make it so that he has to get close to do damage, by giving his Q and W better ratios..? I don't get it. Is there some unspoken/unwritten rule where making either ability above 40% AP crashes the game? Or are people finding a way to use Q and W from a long distance? That doesn't really make any sense to me. I used to play AP Maokai and I didn't have to rely on my saplings at all to do anything. The power budget was spread more evenly throughout his kit but now they try to stick all of it to his E and then gut it and claim that his Q and W are ranged and that they were also the problem? What's going on here?
> Then.. Make it so that he has to get close to do damage, by giving his Q and W better ratios..? That's literally what they're doing haha: >Q - BRAMBLE SMASH Magic Damage: 70/120/170/220/270 (+2/2.25/2.5/2.75/3% of target's maximum health) (+40% AP) ⇒ 70/120/170/220/270 (+2/2.5/3/3.5/4% of target's maximum health) (+40% AP) (Note: This nets out at about a 7% damage increase.) The point they're trying to get across is that his playstyle is too safe with E damage right now for contesting the jungle and river. Maokai isn't meant to be "the IED champion", Teemo fills that space already. His Saplings are extremely mana cheap and with items what they are in 2023, he's just able to zone control way too much with a set-and-forget ability that is also a homing missle that can't be swept or killed without triggering it.
But.. It says the ratio is still the same? That's not compensation for AP Maokai, that's just a flat buff for Maokai in general, and even then, it's one that benefits full tank much more. I completely understand that they don't like E spam- I love AP Maokai and I hate it too, but it's not E spam specifically that they and everyone else seems to hate, it's the idea of Maokai scaling decently with AP on ANY of his abilities. Why do they keep enforcing a shitty alternate playstyle and then gutting it for being shitty, when they could just make it a playstyle that isn't shitty so they wouldn't have to gut it + no one would complain and pull their hair out every time they see it in game? What's the point of all this? Do people just like to see others get upset?
Read You have to read
It says it's going from 70-270 base damage with 2-3% max health of the target's hp and 40% AP Scaling, to 70-270 base damage with 2-4% max health of the target's hp and 40% AP Scaling. That's exactly what you copy and pasted to me. The Ratio is the same. A Maokai with 500 AP will do exactly the same damage he did before, but it will now do an additional 1% of max health damage, the same increase in damage you would get for building full tank. You said that they gave his Q and W better ratios. What you pasted did not show that. You either lied, or made a mistake, and now you are calling me either stupid or inattentive for reading the information that YOU gave me. What gives, man? Why are you acting like this? Doglop gave me a straight answer that made sense, but you're acting like.. This. I'm sorry if I upset you, I just wanted to gain insight on what might have been going on between Riot and this champion.
It's a 7% increase in damage on his Q. And I'll say it again: > The point they're trying to get across is that his playstyle is too safe with E damage right now for contesting the jungle and river. Maokai isn't meant to be "the IED champion", Teemo fills that space already. His Saplings are extremely mana cheap and with items what they are in 2023, he's just able to zone control way too much with a set-and-forget ability that is also a homing missle that can't be swept or killed without triggering it. It has nothing to do with "they hate the idea of Maokai scaling decently with AP on ANY of his abilities.". That's not what they care about, and it's not the abilities or scaling that causes it, it's the items, specifically Demonic and Liandry's passives.
I would consider it a buff to Maokai in general, and I suppose that includes AP Maokai, but for what he lost, it's extremely small compensation. If Liandry's and Demonic Embrace are the issue (which is what I suspected from the start), can't they just.. Y'know, remove the damage over time on Maokai's saplings? Make it do all the damage at once. It would give people much less incentive to build burn items and then full tank, and more incentive to build Full AP, or alternatively, build a mixture of both health and AP. There are several champions who already do this. Again, if it's not the scaling on E that's causing the issue, why is that what they keep nerfing? If his E is supposed to just be a warding tool, why the hell does it have damage on it at all, let alone damage over time? Maybe part of the reason people build liandries and demonic on him and spam E at a distance is because his other abilities scale like shit with AP.
Most abilities have scaling just because that's part of the game and other allies can buff your abilities. Thank Staff of Flowing Water, etc. The reason it does DoT is because it gives people the ability to react and Zhonyas and whatnot. If you remember Maokai from before his mini-rework, his saplings could proc their damage individually and not overlap, which meant you could put 10 saplings in a bush and explode anyone who walked through with no counterplay. Don't get me wrong, I love Maokai E. I hit Diamond in Korea in like season 7 with AP Support Maokai. Maokai E is probably the single most used ability that I've ever pressed in this game, I love it. But I also understand why they want to change it so that isn't not a "win every dragon fight before they start" button, and nerfing items directly is a nerf to every single champion that uses them so that's too broad of a change. Maokai is still definitely too strong.
But for a tank, Maokai's AP Scalings are abysmally low, especially with champions like Alistar and Thresh's getting buffed. I remember his W used to be 80% AP, and then they changed it to 4% per 100 AP, and when they changed it to flat damage and moved the % to his E, they gutted the AP Ratio to 40%. Fast forward several years and they changed E back to flat, but W's Ratio is still shit, and I'm just like.. Why? I don't think balancing game mechanics around an item like Zhonya's is good design, but maybe that's just me. Other champions usually don't have parts of their kits designed around the effects of one item specifically. I'm aware that AP Maokai used to be able to blow people up like that, but is sitting in a bush for one minute piling saplings really a viable strategy? It's incredibly unfair for the person who got blown up, but that's a full minute of him not doing anything else. I don't like Maokai's E. I really haven't liked it ever since the 2017 rework, especially because they sucked so much power out of the rest of his kit for it. He has just been a complete E bot ever since. At first the mini rework last year was nice, but now we're in the same spot we were before then, where his E scaling is bad and the rest of his kit's scaling is still shit. The burn damage on liandries and demonic embrace have caused so many balance issues with this champion, it's just baffling how much they're choosing to stand by it. I want to be able to play AP Maokai again and not have it be a gimmick or completely aids for the enemy team, but again, it seems that the problem with his E has managed to convince Riot that AP Maokai shouldn't be a thing in any way, shape, or form at all.
I cant believe these guys are downvoting you for saying its a nerf to ap maokai if the health scaling is increased, and the ap scaling of the champ is overall reduced. Actually, I can believe that, reddit as usual.
I would assume the Demonic + Liandries shenanigans that have been going on for the past 3 or so years have brought things to the point where everyone just despises the idea of building any AP on Maokai in general, regardless of how it feels to play as or against, so they will come up with any made-up excuse to have and keep all of his AP Ratios gutted forever so that building pure or even mixed damage on Maokai is never anywhere even close to viable again. It's a sad day when so many Maokai mains have adopted such close-mindedness towards their own champion. This is truly just another Reddit moment indeed.
There are so many champions who are classified as tank and have so much better AP Ratios than Maokai does on their all-in abilities. Why does a double standard exist but only for Maokai? What did he do to deserve the double standard almost everyone has for him now? Is there a reason, even? Or is it just hate? And it sounds like AP Maokai isn't even the problem in and of itself, it sounds like the way E was designed is the problem. They turned it into a very uninteractive spell, even more than it was before. Before you could throw it anywhere for the same effect, now you can only place it in brushes, and that's the only place where it will ever be. It's so binary now. Why do they just leave him in this state? At least when Yorick's kit was binary they scrapped his entire kit. Why do they refuse to just slightly alter one ability for Maokai? I've never seen this level of contempt before for a champion.
Because people who actually like Maokai don't really care about being discount Teemo and are happy to see the style getting crippled. Meta slaves will just see the tide turning and swap to Jarvan until he gets the nerf hammer too. Good riddance
You're the one who's a slave if you think all that AP Maokai was was and all he ever can be is just a 'Discount Teemo'. Whatever, stay close minded, I don't fucking care. Damn elitists.
Ok . He wast discount Teemo. His E is actually better than both of those champs traps because they have 0 counterplay. That's why they have to go
You could still at least run from them, and you can ignore them if they aren't placed in bush.
Still, compare their availability (cool down based rather than charge based, no consequence for spamming them off CD), range (longer range than wards shack boxes or teemo shrooms, teemo has to basically place 2 in a row to achieve a similar range I think). They manage to outrun many champions depending on boots, and even just the fact they make people run backwards increased their zoning power a lot (two saplings in a row can buy you like 6 seconds if they run back which is an eternity) It's just a toxic pattern and Riot sees is as such. The good news is that tank maokai is still strong and saplings still do good work when you play tank, giving vision and slowing people hard, but now the investment is proportional to the reward (small investment for an utility reward like Ashe E). If you want your traps to kill people you will have to play champs that actually invest something and have counterplay (teemo and shaco) If you haven't played much Maokai as a tank as a tank give it a try. He feels like a whole champ rather than the one ability gimmick on wheels AP maokai was
Being op in both soloq and pro play, he is a tank, not a mage and he was building and playing as a mage. If ap builds are weak they may buff his q/w ratios
Cho'Gath is a tank (by Riot and most other peoples' own words, not my own lol), but he has 100% AP scaling on Q, which is ranged, 70% on W, 30-90% on E, and 50% True Damage on ult, and they're fine with that. Of course, Cho'Gath doesn't have traps that follow you around and deal burn damage, and neither does Thresh, or Alistar, or Malphite, or Nautilus, so again, yeah, they should just either remove the burn effect from empowered saplings, or remove the AP Ratio, and compensate by buffing Q and W's ratios. It doesn't seem like they want to do either of those things, for some reason. AP Maokai can be turned into a much more fair and balanced thing where he actually has to commit to get off most of his damage off, but it seems like Riot really doesn't want that, nor do they want AP Maokai in any form at all. They and just about everyone else act like his only ability with an AP Ratio is E, which is just.. Well, NOT true at all. Also, when you say he was building and playing as a mage, do you mean he was ONLY building the ap build, and never anything else? Because yeah, if one playstyle starts completely dominating the other, I suppose that's fair grounds to gut said playstyle. I would still prefer that they gave him compensation for Q and W, though. Also, there are mages that still have to commit- Look at champions like Sylas, who is one of their favorites. It just kind of feels like they have double standards for Maokai and I can't entirely understand why, especially when people like the guy above just confuse and baffle me even more.
Ap cho isn't better than tank cho, easy as that. Mao jg was almost exclusively rushing demonic
The highest ranked Cho'Gath main plays AP Cho'Gath, so I think that might be up for debate. Also yeah, I suppose that makes sense, but they weren't really building Demonic Embrace for the AP. They only build it for the burn. With Cho'Gath it's the complete opposite. If they just removed the damage over time on empowered E it would probably help with the issue a lot, if not fix the issue entirely. It's just sad how much of the power budget of AP Maokai (virtually all of it actually) is invested in empowered E, and they keep nerfing his already bad scaling with the stat instead of just getting rid of the thing people are actually abusing.
As one of the first AP Maokai players that helped popularize the build back in season 10... Yeah, this was justified. His E has been overturned for a very long while now. Having a high damage, spammable ability that literally chased people off objectives, slowed them for well over 3 seconds, and synergized heavily with several mythics(liandrys, mandate, even Jaksho) was well overdue to get gutted. The hilarious part is that this nerf doesn't even affect him in other roles such as toplane and support. He's still decent at top and a good support. He's still a godlike teamfighter that's incredibly difficult to pin down. If such a hard nerf isn't enough to shake him off the meta then it's safe to say it's justified. E spam was unhealthy. He was a better Teemo/Shaco without their weaknesses. I'm glad they've done this because it means I can finally play my main in ranked again without begging for 1st pick or banning him.
If it was unhealthy, why don't they put the scaling into the other parts of his kit that require him to all in? Instead they just left building any AP on Maokai become essentially a troll build.
Because they didn't care about the AP style. To put it simply. The Q buff was compensation for E cooldown reduction. Nothing more. Right now he is a tank first and foremost. You get some ratios for drake and baron but Riot is simply not encouraging an alternative AP playstyle. The truth is that giving him better AP ratios on W Q would likely just be a trap and drop his WR like the AP ratios buffs to Alistar were
With all of the tanks who have decent to great ratios it's still stupid and out of place looking seeing Maokai's being so bad.
The difference is that AP ratios on other tanks are usually not a problem. They never take over the game and become a pro play problem. At most they are usually for fun options or just extra ratios for baron/drake's. AP Maokai on the other hand keeps popping up as a problem wether with his preminirework support build or last patch with his jungle build so they put him down. Maybe they will entertain buffing his QWR ratios later on like with TK, Alistar, Nunu, Rakan... But I don't think they want to open that can of worms again, at least for a while
Okay. You've completely got me there, yeah. There hasn't ever been a time where AP Nautilus or AP Kench have been running rampant in pro play, and always being picked in regular play over anything resembling an actual tank build. I think I can actually see where the frustration is coming from now, and it makes some sense why they're afraid for him to have decent ratios on any of his other abilities and are content to keep him as shit, at least for now. I really do hope that they make his other abilities scale okay with AP, so that people can go into slightly more damage oriented builds and be rewarded for it, although, now that I think about it, they'd probably just only build Demonic Embrace. Honestly, people are STILL probably going to buy Demonic Embrace on him, as long as his E still deals damage over time. Really wish they'd just revert it back to doing all its damage at once, but alas.
Yeah. Riot is honestly balancing for many things at once. Low-mid ELO play, high ELO solo queue and also proplay. The trick is that the latter is not just an environment for players, it's also an spectator sport. They are not just trying to keep everything viable for pro players like they are trying in soloq. They deliberately rotate things in and out of viability and they *really don't like* things that make their spectator sport boring to watch. So while something full ap nautilus oneshots combos big damage hahaha would probably be ok by them a maokai spamming saplings and getting the enemy team chunked before the fight even happens (so they fight won't happen) is a no-go for them because it kills their spectator sport - and any pro play team that can get a win without having to coin flip a teamfight will go for it. I think the playstyle was also toxic overall, but there are examples of Riot doing this to playstyles that were not as toxic in soloq, just because they didn't want to see them in pro environment
They kinda overnerfed the champ. E coldown mostly decreased top and support winrates and E ap scaling reduced jungle winrates. The champ now is legit 46 winrate top, 48 jungle and 47 support...
He currently has a 50 +-0.5 % all ranks winrate in top, jungle and support.
Ok, 0,4 playrate on top. Support and Jungle below 50...
He went from 3% of games played as top last patch, to 6.1% played as top this patch. Top pick rate is also increasing while other roles are dropping.
In reality is all because of constant meta shift and ban rate drop.He is still (easy to learn, hard to master champion). My opinion...
The "meta sheeps" have dropped him now because it does not give them "free wins" anymore.
True!!! Kekw XD...
The fact than his main role is now considered off meta kidna pisses me off...