We didn’t get the Maokai ability list through the traditional lines of communication this go round. Instead, he was previewed exclusively on PC Gamer, complete with commentary about his different abilities. This is kind of interesting route for Riot to take, but I support it. I love having commentary from people who have played the character. You’ll see what I mean.

Here’s the text from PC Gamer:

Abilities

Q: Maokai’s arms resemble Hellboy’s: one average sized, one large enough to knock out an elephant. Maokai’s Q makes him slam his trunk-arm into the ground, sending a shockwave rippling through the earth towards the enemy. The shockwave acts as a line nuke, similar to Ezreal’s Essence Flux (W) ability. Originally, the wave resembled Kassadin’s Force Pulse (E) and granted Maokai bonus armor, but the result was a messy spell that just didn’t fit.

W: His bread-and-butter initiating move. Maokai explodes into a multitude of arcane splinters, phasing out of existence for a brief moment in order to reform at the feet of an enemy champon, growing out of the ground underneath them to damage and root them in place for a few seconds. This ability is single-target (imagine if Master Yi’s Alpha Strike (Q) stunned a champion instead of jumping between enemies) and is not channeled, as Maokai ceases to exist during the spell, similar to Alpha Strike.

E: Like the Vulture’s spider mines from Starcraft. Maokai plants an acorn into the ground, which lies in wait for a unfriendly passerby. Once it’s found a target, the acorn will pop out of the ground and run to the enemy champion, exploding for light AoE damage when it gets there. This is great for traps, keeping an eye on enemy movements in the jungle and useful in team fights due to its small AoE damage. It can also be used as a scouting tool, similar to Teemo’s Noxious Trap (R), but Maokai will be much more limited in the number that he can place.

R (ultimate): Maokai’s ultimate ability fits right into the current meta-game, where teamfights often decide who wins or loses a match. Think of it as the defensive version of Anivia’s Ultimate. Maokai creates a placeable AoE that drains mana per second while active. Allied champions standing in the area will receive more and more Magic Resist as the spell absorbs damage. It can be maintained as long as Maokai has enough mana, but it’s costly, so we never had it on for more than 6 or so seconds. When the ability is toggled off, Maokai’s cooldowns will be reduced according to how much damage was absorbed during the spell. If you soak up enough spell damage, you can reach a threshold that will, in essence, allow you to double-cast your other abilities as magic flows back into Maokai.

Passive: Maokai’s passive gives him some decent staying power early on in the laning phase, when champions are casting spells to ensure last-hits and harassment. He gains increased health regeneration when champions near him (enemy or ally) cast spells.

He sounds interesting, though I’m definitely bummed that his traps will be limited. I really enjoy trap champions, and I think it would be cool if Riot developed sub-classes of heroes centered around abilities like this. I’ll hold of on judgement until I see the numbers, though. His ult sounds really boring. I hope it has a pretty massive radius, too, or that it at least stacks up quickly. Few teamfights I’m a part of these days take place in one area.

As for the way this was leaked, it’s great to see someone’s opinion, particularly for skills like his W. Riot’s own skill descriptions can be a bit, ah, cryptic at times. I’d like to think we’ll get to the point that we have numerical values for the abilities roughly a week in advance but I doubt it’s in the cards. As we know from the Renekton release, numbers change practically up to the release date.