Each of Aphelios' weapons have different strengths, so try to find the right situation for your current weapons.
The cooldown on Maokai's self healing is heavily gated on how many time you hit him with spells. Careful about wasting abilities on him.
Maokai will avoid taking damage while he's using Twisted Advance, so don't waste your spells.
Saplings will chase the first enemy that gets too close, but detonate after a few seconds or if they collide with other enemies. Be especially careful around brush sapling, as they are much more dangerous.
The stat comparisons shown here clarify some strategic Aphelios against Maokai counter statistics that may help us realize the differences and similarities between the two. Aphelios’s KDA ratio ([kills + assists] / deaths) of NaN is greater than Maokai’s ratio of NaN, demonstrating that Aphelios may be more central to his team's team fighting potential than Maokai. This observation is largely caused by the difference in kills.
Aphelios often has a much larger longest killing spree than his matchup does. Typically, he receives less damage than Maokai. This is usually reflective of different amounts of tankyness, yet it can also illustrate that the one champion has less mobility and thus is unable to kite away from further damage when engaged or poked.
Both League of Legends champs are great champions. Both champs have their strengths, weaknesses, and counters. In the game's current meta, Aphelios usually fairs equally well when playing against Maokai, with a 49.2% win rate. As a result, Aphelios makes an ok counter to Maokai.
While Aphelios does have a lower winrate than Maokai, when facing one another, Aphelios also has a much greater level of difficulty that makes him a more complex champ to learn. You still need to be cautious when picking Aphelios into Maokaias his relative depth means that you may not be able to unleash his full potential without a significant amount of practice beforehand.
Additionally, Aphelios has only a small amount of utility and CC, a similar amount to Maokai. This makes her just as valuable during teamfights, especially when fighting champions with a lot of burst damage.
While there isn't a single best champion in League of Legends, in Aphelios vs Maokai matchups, Maokai is the better champ with a similar win rate, more champion depth, and a similar amount of utility to help out your teammates during late stage team fights.
Aphelios is a somewhat poor counter to Maokai. Focus your tactics on increasing your CS and taking out objectives. If you are able to do that, you should do very well as Aphelios against Maokai.
To truly master Aphelios to counter Maokai during both the lane and mid / late game phases of League of Legends, you should continue reading to gather a few extra lessons on this matchup. If you pay attention to the build and tips displayed here, you will grow your win rate significantly and be that much closer to League of Legends pro players.
Aphelios often picks up much more CS as Maokai. Champions who on average don't earn many minion kills typically don't need much CS to be effective, such as support champions. They are able to scale well off of their skills, stats, and first items alone. Yet, champs with a lot of CS, such as hyper-carries, usually need many items to be effective. In either situation, try to surpass the numbers shown here to do well.
The most important items to prioritize in your Aphelios versus Maokai build consist of Galeforce, Infinity Edge, and The Collector. When Aphelios bought at least these three items in his build, he performed much better versus Maokai than with many other common builds. In fact, Aphelios had an average win rate of 49.2% when playing against Maokai with this counter build.
To have the highest probability of defeating Maokai as Aphelios, Aphelios players should equip the Fleet Footwork, Overheal, Legend: Bloodline, Cut Down, Taste of Blood, and Ingenious Hunter runes from the Precision and Domination rune sets. Of all the rune sets players chose for Aphelios vs Maokai fights, this mixture of runes resulted in the greatest win rate. Moreover, these runes averaged a 49.2% win rate overall.
By default, tips, statistics, and builds on how to beat Maokai as Aphelios are given for every ranked division. If you would like to filter the stats and builds to a specific division, you can use the selection menu located earlier in the counter matchup guide.