I'm kinda curious about Olaf lately. He got buffed and his winrate increased but it's still kinda low. I've never actually played Olaf (new or old) outside of like a custom game so I don't really know how to play him. How are people successfully building new Olaf? Not pure tank like old Olaf?
Also I tried Shyvana top a bunch of times after her rework, and before it got popular, but it didn't feel particularly strong. She has good waveclear, tower killing, and dueling power (if your opponent is dumb enough to fight you) but I felt gimpy with her in teamfights. Apparently it's become more popular lately, and having success in high elos. I wonder what kinda builds and stuff they're using. I liked trolling with exhaust+barrier, made you stupid hard to dive or kill. Also I have the Ice Drake skin which is pretty sweet so I wanna use it more >:O
Anyone gotten mystery gifts they haven't mentioned yet? I got Woad Ashe, Firefox Ahri, and Dreadknight Nasus. I don't really play any of them except maybe Ashe.
Even when Olaf was at his strongest point he had a very low winrate despite having like an 80% first ban/first pick status at professional play.
He's hard to play. Pretty high skill floor, and a very high skill ceiling.
He's been getting play in the NACL and ALCS since 3.13 went live. I've been seeing most typically 1 damage item + pure tank, but last night Quas stomped pretty hard as pure tank Olaf, but I think that was more a result of him being against a team with four physical damage dealers. At the end of the game he had ~400 armor, virtually unkillable, and at that point he was surviving enough to deal relevant damage regardless of his build. That said, in the other games I've seen from Quas and other players picking Olaf it's been Hydra and whatever tank items were most relevant for the opposing team.
You can play him as a splitpusher, or if your team has hard engage elsewhere you can go anticarry. For splitpushing I've been seeing Sunfire + Hydra. He has insane dueling potential because his steroids are kind of silly. Not even counting the Spirit Visage effect of his W he's getting like 3k worth of stats at max rank. His ult trades 1.2k in defensive stats for 3.2k worth in AD. Over 6k virtual gold in fighting stats... not even taking into account what he can get from his passive + the Spirit Visage effect from W. He's definitely one of those characters that kind of demands you send two champs if you really want to stop him from splitpushing.
If you're going to be scrapping and teamfighting with your team then over Sunfire you definitely go for Randuins.
Spirit Visage is obviously the best MR item for him. Aside from being the best MR item in the game anyways, its synergy with Hydra + his W can get pretty silly. Yesterday I facechecked into a 3v1, my friends on Skype immediately started to curse me out a little for the throw... until I took out two of them. I was at ~15% health and just not going down. I ulted through the first Nasus Wither, but unfortunately it was the second Wither that finally got me
Luxury items would be stuff like Frozen Mallet, Maw of Malmortius, etc.
I've been 6 item Olaf in a few of my games since the buffs, and he scales way harder into lategame than old Olaf did. I had E doing over 400 damage when my ult was on, and that's up every couple seconds. Eat your heart out Darius.
The big difference compared to old Olaf though is that old Olaf did a looot more with nothing but pure tank items. It made him a lot less item dependent, and cheaper to build overall. It made old Olaf harder to shut down, which really showed as old Olaf was THE 2v1 champion because he could be behind in gold and still duel your carry until very late game when he finally started to fall off. He doesn't have that same level of early game strength, but he scales very well into the lategame now.
/big wall of text on one of my favorite champs in the game
