League of Legends: Olaf

A few months ago I played a couple games against Olaf in the top lane and got completely dominated. I didn't really understand what was going on and we ended up taking the standard approach to dealing with a champion that blows you up... We banned him aggressively. Then we started playing 3v3s and he beat us there too, so we started banning him there as well. We keep running into other champions we really want to ban in 3v3 though and ended up dropping Olaf from our list. At which point we promptly played against him and got destroyed again. Clearly I need a new solution to the problem...

One way to deal with it could be to read a bunch of guides on how to play him and try to work out weaknesses from there. I wish I had the time to read guides for all the champions but that just isn't realistic. But maybe I could do just one or two? I could have time for that but it doesn't seem all that fun. Instead I just went out and bought him! Play a game against bots and then read some guides with a base of information to learn from. It turns out Olaf has a couple mechanics which actually make him substantially different from other champions...

The biggest difference is the way his primary damage ability scales. For almost every ability in the game the ability gets stronger the more ranks you put into it. It gets stronger the more gear you have. (Typically a caster will have abilities that scale off of ability power and a fighter will have abilities that scale off of attack damage. Ryze scales off of maximum mana!) It will get weaker the more gear your opponent has. (Armor will reduce physical damage, magic resistance will reduce magical damage.)

Olaf's E ability ignores armor. It ignores magic resistance. And it doesn't get stronger from any stats you build. It does a flat, guaranteed amount of damage based on rank of the skill and that is all. This means you can't build mitigation to try to survive against him. (You could build a lot of maximum health or health regen I guess.) It also means he doesn't really have anything to gain by gearing up himself so he's likely to just build a lot of mitigation himself. This makes it so you can't really survive against him in lane and also so you can't burn him out first. His ability maxes out in power at character level 9 though, so as the game goes longer he gets relatively weaker. He's at his most powerful around that range so if you survive through it without handing him a bunch of kills you should be doing ok...

His Q ability is also uniquely interesting. You throw your axe to a spot and it does damage and slows anything it hits on the way. It has an 8 second cooldown. If you walk up to your axe you pick it up and knock 4.5 seconds off of the cooldown. If you have other cooldown reduction it interacts very well... With blue buff the cooldown was more like 6 seconds. And if you pick your axe up you still knock the full 4.5 off which means you can spam the ability every 1.5 seconds if you can pick up your axe in time... It turns out you can throw it right at your feet! It will still hit anything around you and you'll instantly pick it back up without having to move or stop attacking. This seems like a really strong way to jungle if you can keep up with the mana cost. (Yay blue buff!) For laning it means he can chase pretty much anyone who runs in a straight line. It seems like you want to veer off if he hits you and make him choose between chasing you or picking up his axe. Letting him keep chasing right into his axe is asking to get slowed forever and die.

His W gives extra attack damage, life steal, and spell vamp. This lets him basically stay in lane forever. It lets him jungle forever. The extra damage even helps in a team fight!

His ultimate is insane. It breaks all forms of crowd control and makes him immune to it for the next 6 seconds. It also massively raises his magic resistance. Oh, and it gives some armor penetration as a passive! It doesn't really do any damage which makes it fairly weak in a team fight (though he can't really be kited) but in a 1v1 situation it's so good.

His passive is very similar to where it's good. For each 1% health he's lost he gains 1% attack speed. This makes him a really fantastic duelist. Is there anyone who can kill him in a 1v1 fight? I'm not actually sure.


That said, what can I do to deal with Olaf in lane? Having a ranged attack seems really important. His brutally powerful attack is basically melee ranged so someone who can farm at ranged can survive. (Melee have to walk up to make money and then they get hurt badly.) Alternatively a massive amount of self healing could work. Warwick for example may be able to stay alive... But his ult is worthless against Olaf's ult. Warwick may be able to get a kill if he hits level 6 first though. I think Caitlyn might actually be the best choice since she has very long range and an escape if he walks up to slow her.

What about bursting him out? It can't be anyone who counts on using CC as the key to their combo (Veigar for example) but possibly Leblanc could take him down from full to dead? (Though when Olaf runs magic resist quints/marks/glyphs I doubt that would work.) How about Akali? She can go invisible to help mitigate the incoming damage from his passive and she has a lot of burst.

It's pretty clear most of my top champions can't compete. Nasus and Tryndamere should get completely dominated by Olaf. I can't imagine Lee Sin doing any better. (Maybe if he maxes his shield first and only goes in to last hit with it up?) Kennen might have enough range to stay alive and farm up? But anyone who has to walk anywhere near Olaf is going to lose the harass war hardcore.

The trick may well be having your jungler or mid lanes constantly gank him. Olaf is ridiculous 1v1 but doesn't have anything that scales to help him 1v2.

The best guide I've seen so far mentions Ryze as pretty much the only champion he loses to. Huh.