Should You Main Maokai? Tier D
Maokai is tier D for maining. Only 5 of its mains are Challenger or Grandmaster across the three major regions, against 286,800 games played worldwide.
Reviewed for League of Legends patch 16.15.
Verdict. Maokai scores 1.74 high elo mains per 100,000 games played, against a median of 2.26.
The numbers
Score 1.74 high elo mains per 100,000 games played, ban-adjusted · 0 Challenger · 5 Grandmaster · 27 tracked mains in KR, EUW and NA · 286,800 games played worldwide · 3.11% pick rate · 0.25% ban rate
Small sample. Only 27 tracked mains in the three major regions, so treat this position as indicative rather than settled.
What this means
From the video: Vambient's breakdown, lightly cleaned from speech
I think we're going to probably explain a little bit about Maokai. He is used a decent amount in pro play as kind of an answer to certain compositions, but there are zero challenger Malachai mains and there are five grandmaster ones. He does have a kind of a little bit above option in terms of play rate and he doesn't have any bands at him whatsoever.
But yeah, he's going to be very tough to main up until high elo.
How this was measured
Two numbers, one division. First, how many players are currently in Challenger or Grandmaster maining this champion in Korea, Europe West and North America, from onetricks.gg. Second, how many ranked games the entire playerbase plays of this champion worldwide across every rank, from op.gg. The result is high elo mains per 100,000 games played, then reduced by the champion's ban rate, because a champion you cannot pick is a champion you cannot main.
This is not a win rate list and it is not a patch strength list. It measures availability-adjusted high-elo main density: how much Challenger and Grandmaster main representation a champion has relative to how often it is played. It is not the probability that maining this champion will get you to high elo. The score counts Challenger and Grandmaster mains only, drawn from a tracked pool that starts at Master; it does not include the Chinese server, and it counts accounts rather than people, so one dedicated player with several high elo accounts shows up more than once. Patch 16.15. The full plain English explanation, including everything this list cannot tell you, is on the main list page.
Popularity is not the signal. What matters here is how densely high elo mains appear relative to how often the champion is played.