Saplings can be tossed into brush for empowered effect - but don't stack well.
Try looking for flanks or other situations where Nature's Grasp is unavoidable or takes enemies by surprise.
Maokai's passive makes him extremely durable against focus fire from spells - so long as he can still basic attack something.
Sylas's healthbar can be deceptive, watch out for his Kingslayer!
Try to fight Sylas when he isn't able to take your ultimate.
The stat comparisons shown on this page clarify several valuable Maokai against Sylas matchup stats that may help us appreciate the differences and similarities between this pair of champions. Maokai’s KDA ratio ([kills + assists] / deaths) of NaN is better than Sylas’s KDA ratio of NaN, indicating that Maokai may be more central to his team's team fighting effectiveness than Sylas. This observation is largely a result of the differences in assists.
Maokai typically has a significantly smaller longest kill spree than his opponent does. Commonly, he takes less damage than Sylas. This is usually reflective of differing health capacities; however, it can also imply that the one champion has less agility and thus is unable to kite away from additional damage when poked or engaged.
Both League of Legends champs are great. Both champs have their pros and cons. In the game's current meta, Maokai usually wins when trying to fight Sylas, with a 52.6% win rate. As a result, Maokai makes a good counter for Sylas.
While Maokai does have a higher winrate compared to Sylas, when they face off with one another, Maokai also has a lower level of difficulty that makes him a less difficult champ to develop with. You don't need to be too worried when picking Maokai into Sylas.
Furthermore, Maokai has a very large amount of CC and other utility, a similar amount to Sylas. This makes her just as valuable during team fights, especially when fighting champions with a lot of burst damage.
While there isn't a single best champion in League of Legends, in Maokai vs Sylas matchups, Maokai is the better champion with a noticably higher win rate, less champion complexity, and a similar amount of utility to help out your team members during team fights.
Maokai is a good counter to Sylas. Make sure you focus your gameplay on keeping up your gold income and destroying objectives. If you are able to do that, you should do very well as Maokai against Sylas.
If you would like to learn all of the intricacies of Maokai in order to counter Sylas during both the early game and mid / late game phases of League of Legends, you should keep reading to gather a few extra lessons on this matchup. If you listen to the build and tips shown above, you will increase your win rate by a lot and be that much closer to League of Legends pro players.
Maokai typically racks up less CS as Sylas. Champions who on average don't get much CS usualy don't require much CS to be valuable teammates, such as sup champs. These kinds of champions are able to scale properly off of their skills, stats, and first items alone. Yet, champions with a lot of CS, such as hyper-carries, usually require many items to be effective. In either situation, try to exceed the values shown on this page to do well.
The top items to prioritize in your Maokai versus Sylas build consist of Liandry's Anguish, Shard of True Ice, and Demonic Embrace. When Maokai bought at least these three items in his build, he did significantly better when fighting Sylas than with many other typical builds. In fact, Maokai had an average winrate of 52.6% battling Sylas with this build.
To have the best likelihood of annihilating Sylas as Maokai, you should take the Aftershock, Font of Life, Second Wind, Unflinching, Biscuit Delivery, and Cosmic Insight runes from the Resolve and Inspiration rune sets. Out of all the runes players chose for Maokai vs Sylas face-offs, this combo of runes resulted in the highest win rate. In fact, these runes gave a 52.6% winrate overall.
By default, tips, statistics, and builds on how to beat Sylas as Maokai are displayed for all ranked divisions. To scope the statistics and builds to a specific division, you may use the selection menu located earlier in the counter matchup guide.