I have been doing this a lot recently in ranked, 1200 elo, and it is working. I am definitely carrying my team through the fights and getting people fed by locking down a squishy target

Lots of wards, for sure, coupled with the bombs. good vision I have found (and everyone says so) wins games and teamfights. I was skeptical to buy lots of wards at first, but once you get used to it, you don't even notice the missing gold.

my typical build has clarity (very underrated i think) and flash. My masteries are 4/3/23.

I buy 2 wards, a ton of mana pots, and a few health pots. Drop some bombs at blue or red for the jungler at 1:25 and head to lane.


Harass, and lockdown the ADC when possible for a kill and get out.

If all is well, I can get an early giant's belt. If not, I take ruby crystal. either way, I restock the wards and a few pots of each kind and return to lane.

Rush the warmogs ASAP. once I have warmogs, initiating is a breeze. boots are being built somewhere in the between. armor or magic resist. whatever is more necessary.

Still assuming all is well, I typically just get some pretty standard tank items. Randuin's is a good choice.

The key for me, I never get any AP. I used to go AP tank, but I realize now how folly that is. My miniscule damage increase is not worth the sacrificed tanking potential. I should rely on the teammates to do all the damage, and I will suck all the damage up.

Thoughts? I usually get downvoted. If you intend to downvote, tell me why. I can handle criticism and am always looking to get better.

(if you are wondering why I don't jungle maokai, well, it is because that isn't in my skillset... not my style - i've tried)

Try Leona. More CC, defense steroid, AoE CC. Basically what you're doing right now, only more efficient.

but have you considered maokai's ult, which reduces damage on the whole team? also his AoE slow skillshot?

I did Mao support last night I agree it's really fun I love harassing with my seed bomb

The reason you get down voted is because you're not playing at a competitive level yet, you seem to be less than level 30, which is okay, everyone is a noob for some time. But your tactics and playstyle have room to improve quite a bit. Once again, not a bad thing, but try to keep them evolving as fast as you can handle it.

First off, clarity is generally a terrible spell, even on mana-hungry champions, learning to manage your mana and play for kills rather than just spamming abilities is an extremely important aspect of learning to play a tank, as all tanks suffer from high mana costs which punishes them early on. Work on putting more MP5 into your build to get your mana back when you're not using abilities. And trade out clarity for another spell like exhaust or heal for more defensiveness, or ghost for more mobility.

Another thing is trying other supports in lane, while Maokai is certainly a viable support and really is quite good at raking in kills early on, he has a poor transition from early game to mid game if he fails to get at least 3 kills or assists during the lane phase. Other popular supports like Leona or Nami become powerful fight initiators and buff bots mid game, but do so with much less need for gold than Maokai as they scale with their abilities better than he does.

Lastly, Warmog is a poor first item, not because it doesn't make you hard to kill, but because you gain absolutely no utility from it. As a support tank, the best item for you to start out with is usually Shurelya's Reverie, it is a powerful initiating tool and allows you to save allies who are caught off guard. It also allows you to rush GP10, which is key for most supports to transition with. Next up is usually one of the new Kage's lucky pick items. You can sit on a Lucky pick for as long as you like, building other items off the GP10. You want your build to be a mix of damage and utility, it may not seem like it now, but building the right items on Maokai will make his damage increase dramatically. For starting out, since you don't lose a lot of durability through them, look at Sunfire Cape combined with Abyssal Scepter. These two items give a hefty and well balanced chunk of HP, MR, armor, and some damage that fits very nicely in with the rest of Maokai's ability set. Other wise try to work in some more utility through things like Catalyst, which either builds into Rod of Ages which gives more HP and damage. Or something like Ohmwrecker, which is an extremely powerful tower diving and pushing tool.

Otherwise you seem to be doing pretty well with Maokai, remember to have fun with him, and work in advanced techniques as you play him more. Also, some good masteries on him are 0-9-21, taking Mini-Tenacity, Armor and MR, and a little extra movespeed and Mana Regen.


-GLHF