Hello Shark of Void!

I'm glad you liked my graphics! Since you asked I'll try to guide you through the making of the chapter titles specifically.

I personally use the free to use Krita as my drawing/image editing software. But Adobe Photoshop, GIMP or any other similar software should be able to do more or less the same stuff.

I started off by simply writing the titles in plain white, adjust size and pick a font you like.



Then I added a layer style to give it its texture and color etc. I started off by using a tree bark texture as a pattern overlay. This texture is built-in with Krita, but you can always add your own textures and use those.



Then I added an additional green color overlay. Now my text had the 'Forest theme'.



Lastly I added a simple orange outer glow to make the text stand out well enough.



Now the text layer is ready to be added on top of my base banner!

I hope my explanation was clear! Always feel free to contact me if you need any more help, either here or on Discord (where I'll generally respond more quickly).

Maokai isn't gonna play to win lane, rather to survive lane and play for teamfights. And he's a full tank that is terrible at splitpushing, so teamfight oriented Font of Life just works way better imo.

Oh no not again! xD Never thought a mod would actually look at this guide. :P

Well thanks for your kind words! I didn't know Zuma's Revenge, but after looking it up I can see it has a similar thematic and vibe.

You can use some of my coding any time! :) Most of it is (partially) based/inspired on free to use templates from Guide To Making A Guide or @ Katasandra's wonderful Table Coding Guide so it's perfectly legal to use it! I you want a specific code out of my guides I can just PM it to you. :)

Also congratz to you for being close to 1 million views! Pretty sure you will get there even faster since Pyke is a quite popular champion. (And especially with your award now! :P)

It's funny that you say Sylas hard counters Maokai. My first toplane Maokai game in quite a while was against one. I actually destroyed him during laning phase and carried the game. xD
But in all seriousness, if I get to play as Maokai against Sylas more I might see your point and then I'll add it to the guide.



Thanks for your nice comment and have a nice day! (Oh and if you ever find outdated content in my guide feel free to let me know) ;)

Counters and bans are always partially subjective, so if you want to ban certain champions because they tend to be hard to play against with Maokai, that's completely fine.
These are the champions that I personally think are worth banning:

For toplane, Darius is always scary and a safe ban. Just too much true damage and he is quite strong at all points of the game. A close second might be Fiora. like Darius, she deals tons of true damage and she is just a pain to lane against. And though Fiora is already borderline broken, there are more buffs for her coming this next patch...

For jungle there are a few possible bans, but no single champion that counters you super hard. If relies more on the player's macro. But Master Yi can be worth banning especially in low elo where he is popular. He farms a lot faster than you and will hypercarry late game when fed. He shreds Maokai easily with his true damage. Kayn is similar. Maokai can't match his farm speed and if he goes Rhaast he can destroy you with his % max HP damage.

For support Brand is usually my go-to ban. High (% max HP) damage, a stun to stop your engage and an insane ultimate. He will own laning phase and you won't be able to do much against him. If I don't ban Brand I would probably go for an enchanter with high disengage like Janna or Lulu. If you can't close the distance, you can't use Sap Magic which means you have no form of tankyness available outside of your stats. I don't think Blitzcrank or Leona are too hard. They are melee and you can disrupt their engage quite easily.

Well, same here xD. I personally prefer Ultimate Hunter and always take it, but in general Relentless Hunter is more popular amongst Maokai players. Anyways, both runes are fine and are included in my guide.

Thanks man!

Thank you very much!

Both are viable but serve a different purpose. Inspiration is more defensive and Domination is more offensive. I personally prefer Domination as I like to play more aggressivly. Sapling Toss + Cheap Shot from bushes hurts a lot, so it's great to zone enemies. And Relentless Hunter is really nice to have in order to catch, roam and gank.

The general rule is to take Aftershock into ranged matchups and Grasp of the Undying into melee matchups. However, in several harder melee matchups where you won't be able to take longer trades ( Darius, Trundle...), you won't be able to fully make use of Grasp of the Undying. Long trades are too dangerious, so it's more useful to go for shorter trades with Aftershock.
If you're not sure what to take, you should probably go with Aftershock as it will be fine in most situations and it synergizes greatly with Maokai.

Hope this helps, sorry if it wasn't clearly enough explained in my guide.

Aftershock is way better than Guardian on Maokai imo. Maokai can't heal/shield allies (except for when you take Font of Life) and the only other way to proc it is to be close to an ally. In most cases you will be together with the adc, but you shouldn't stay too close to them. A Maokai that isn't engaging/being the frontline is basically useless. The only case it might be useful is when you got a weak early, strong late hypercarry like Twitch or Kog'Maw and you will really have to peel a lot. Otherwise, Aftershock is simply really strong on Maokai and it's more consistent.
Feel free to try it yourself though. It all depends on personal playstyle in the end.

Thanks man! Yeah I made some new coding since I wasn't 100% happy with the victorious Maokai style (and I saw some really beautiful guides like yours lol). I thought it would be nice to take it back to the original totemic style and improve it and I'm happy with how it turned out, although there is still much room for improvement. :p

Congratulations to you on winning as well of course!

Wow thank you! I've learned so much from your Guide to making a Guide when I got started on Mobafire a few years ago, so your kind words mean a lot to me.

Thank you very much @ Jhoijhoi!