Maokai is a beast in the jungle

[Ziek88]

It's been awhile since I've played Maokai and last night I played 4 games as him with my friend (4 of us with 1 random). I don't count the 4th cause it ended up being 4v5. We were winning till we had a quit. Anywho, in 3 consecutive games I didn't die once and we won every game within 25 minutes due to enemy surrender. May be fast becoming my favorite jungler for aggressive play. Add a Malphite to the team and things just get awesome.

Game one:
Rage of the Forest - YouTube

[xLykos]

Yeah he's been my favorite jungler ever since I started jungling. I'm used to play support champions so playing Maokai just fit me like a glove

[LiNuX]

I've never jungled with Mao although I wanted to plenty of times. Good work in your games.

I originally used to jungle with Shaco but then picked up Amumu which became my favorite jungler, Now I alternate between the two and they both fun.

[xLykos]

I like Alistar jungle too but he has really long cooldowns and if you mess up his Headbutt/Pulverize combo then you're gonna have a lot of failed ganks. Amumu is probably my favorite but he is always banned in ranked games so I don't get to play him very often I also reallllllly like Cho'Gath jungle too. Easy ganks, insanely tanky and a very good clear time when you have some attack speed.

[Ziek88]

Cho'gath is really fun in the jungle. I mostly pull him out for Twisted Treeline though. My main junglers are Nocturne, Maokai, Cho'gath and sometimes I'll use Sion. I have a lot of champs for jungle though.

I like Maokai so much because he has so much CC and it seems not a lot of people play him nor do they seem to know just what he does. I don't think I'd play him with randoms though. If my team doesn't follow me in, your dead.

Lykos, how do you usually build Maokai? I'm always open to new ideas.

[xLykos]

My runes consist of Attack Speed Marks, Armor Seals, Magic Resist Glyphs, and Ability Power Quints and I use 0-9-21 masteries. I like to build Spirit of the Ancient Golem, Boots of Mobility, Abyssal Scepter, Sunfire Cape, Runic Bulwark, and Wit's End. But depending on what's going on my build can change. Like maybe a Warmog's if I'm not tanky enough or a Randuin's if they're really AD heavy.

[Ziek88]

Not terribly different from mine. I like to get Spirit of the ancient golem, iceborn gauntlet, rod of ages and then whatever else I need for what I"m against. I almost never get much past that in my build though. I tend to be getting a lot of wards too. The support and I handle the vision. Malphite and Maokai frontline is scary.

[xLykos]

I don't like to get RoA out of the jungle cause if you don't get it early it kind of loses it's muster. I go for more of a tank build when I play Maokai.

[Ziek88]

The tank build makes sense. It really depends on what your team is doing too. I would probably build more tanky too in other circumstances. For me, we have a malphite or someone else playing true tank so if I get some good AP items and build off-tank when the real tank goes all in I can drop that ult on him and it does a LOT of damage when I trigger it making it easy for our ADC, mid and top to mop up.

[xLykos]

Yeah, there's no one way to play any champion. All up to each individual summoner and if it works then you can't really argue against it.