ABOUT ME

On League I go by Federals1, and since 2018 I have hit challenger with at least 900 lp every single season. My highest rank as of right now is rank 3 back in season 9, and peaked rank 3 again in season 13. I was also the number 1 Darius in the world at that point, and over the years have gotten top 10/5 on Volibear, Mundo, Sett, Garen, Malphite, Olaf, Aatrox and Mordekaiser. Most of the time I will play on my main account, so you can check out what I do there. Right now I'm not insanely focused on climbing but in the near future I will push for Challenger or at least get Grandmaster in a timely manner. I am also available on tapin. gg, so if you want to give it a shot you can use the link here to try it out and see if you like it: https://tapin.gg/r/Federals1

FUTURE GUIDES

I will be making more guides in the future, some already being in the works. My goal is to make a guide for every single champion I am extremely confident with, and ones I've been playing for a very long time where I have unique insights to share.
I am currently working on multiple guides but I cannot give an exact date when they will be out. I will post them gradually as I finish them, so if you want to see when they are out for a new champion you can follow and be up to date. To make sure they are done quicker not all of them will them will have a matchup spreadsheet at the start, that alone takes me a week by itself, it's massive.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VNP-vbM1ql2DlDQXK077kSBRDaJln62MsKeGxE4L0H0/edit?usp=sharing

Here you will find every single champion matchup in the entire game and the way I tend to play them most often.

While you wait in the loading screen, or even before minions spawn, go on an external website and check what runes your opponent has. I use op. gg or u. gg, but any website that show runes in full works. You will be able to see exactly what your opponent's runes are, and it can play a big part in your very first trade and knowing exactly how you might want to play out the first few waves. Here's an example: you see the enemy has Resolve secondary. It's extremely important to see what he has in Resolve. You can check and let's say they have Bone Plating and Overgrowth. Now you know you should play out your first trade a bit differently, trying to proc down Bone Plating first, or knowing that if you go for a trade he has that extra block power. This is something you should look to do every single game to gain an advantage.

Olaf can provide a lot of pressure early on. His level 1 is very strong and you can just threaten to kill your enemy laner if you just walk up and chain Q hits on them. Your passive gives you a lot of dueling powers and allows you to keep the fight going as you get lower and lower. Level 2 and 3 are also very strong points for him. In a ton of matchups you can take W at lvl 2 and, much like at lvl 1, threaten to kill if the enemy doesn't give you space and they try to walk up to greed for last hits. The one thing you have to watch out for when going to fight the enemy laner is that you can get ganked. There's actually a lot of times when you can just turn it around and kill both players, but typically it's best not to challenge it and just try to back off. You will automatically push the wave because of your Q, so ideally try to kill the enemy laner before the 4th wave, then hard shove into their turret, and then recall to buy an item. If it's not possible at least try to get a cheater recall off, that one is much more doable.

If you actually manage to kill your enemy laner and it's first blood, you can recall and buy Vampiric Scepter. Once you get it, you have insane lane control into almost every single melee champion matchup. You can take fights that are lost at first and still come out on top due to your insane lifesteal from Vampiric, Doran's Blade, and your passive. It's almost like a Warwick passive heal. As long as you can hit stuff you will heal up really well.

Level 6 is another big spike for Olaf. If the enemy is ever at your tower, if you hit your Q you can just straight up ult (and ghost if your have it, sometimes not even needed) and kill them flat out. Into immobile champions such as Cho'Gath, Sion, Ornn etc., they just straight up die because they can't get you off them. They need to take a specific setup in their runes and summoner spells just to survive, and it's not always a guarantee they will escape it.

Due to your high early game pressure you can always secure priority for Voidgrubs on your side, and if your ultimate is up you can straight up 2v1 a lot of the times. The abilty to be immune to any cc is massive and makes it so it's very hard for the enemies to peel you off. If they don't have the damage to kill you straight up, you just win it. That being said, there are some specific matchups where they can anihilate Olaf as hard, if not even harder than his best matchups. Most of the time you don't have room to outplay those specific matchups, and if you ever see one of those you must take some very specific items, possibly rune setups, just so ensure you don't die.

Olaf also has the ability to proxy, and he can do it very well. Once you have at least Tiamat you can insta clear the wave every time. 2 Q hits on the wave and it's basically gone. It forces the enemies to come and deal with you asap, if they don't you can always go really far into their base, around their inhibitor turret, get the wave, and then get a free recall. By the time you get back you will always catch the wave. The enemy cannot recall as they would lose up an entire wave, and even if they clear it quickly it can be bad to base, as most of the time they will be at their turret. If they actually send people to stop you, you can usually take at least 1 person down. If it's a 2v1 and you have Ravenous Hydra on you, you can typically just kill them both. Even a 3v1 is not guaranteed to work.

This is by far Olaf's strongest point. His item synergy is insane and his power level is through the roof. Typically by this point you should have at least 2 completed items, usually Ravenous Hydra and Experimental Hexplate, but not always the case. With just 2 completed items you can take over the game and start to get your other 2 core items.

Into any champion that wants to cc you down and kite you, you can pop ult and kill them every single time. Ashe is a perfect example. No matter what she does she cannot peel you off her, unless she flashes over a wall but that's something anyone can do really. It's actually on her team to have enough damage to kill you because peeling through cc is literally impossible, and that's another thing with Olaf. The enemy team is either equipped with some very specific champions to deal with you, or you can quite literally walk into 3,4 and in rare cases even all 5 people and kill every single of them of them if you are strong enough.

The reason Olaf is so insanely strong mid game is due to his kit and what his abilities do and because his item synergy is insane. His "full build" will almost always be Ravenous Hydra, Experimental Hexplate, Death's Dance and Maw of Malmortius. Even though you don't have every item slot used with this build, this is basically the full build for him. It's when he has his peak power and the sooner you get it the better. If you get to this and the enemy is behind they have 2 options to deal with you: either try to kite your ult out and let it drop off, or have enough damage to burst you down instantly. If they can't do either of those things, they straight up die. You can walk into the middle of 5 people and instantly kill their priority target because their only form of peeling you off that target is killing you.

You can look to split push a side lane, generally the lane opposite to the main objective, and force people to come deal with you. If they send just one person and you are fed you can dive them and then take the turret. That being said, there are some champions who do beat you in the 1v1 on side lane at this point, but they are more direct counterpicks and champions that beat you in lane as well. In those matchups Olaf's job becomes to group for teamfighting, looking to kill the immobile enemies. It's very rare an entire team has all their champions be able to deal with you running in, so you should at least get one.

You really do not want to get this point with Olaf. By this point the enemies start to get their items and it takes you longer to kill people. If you rush in headfirst into a fight late game you will more often than not get burst instantly due to the high damage that is present. You actually need to wait for an opening to go and get a pick, and even then it can still be very hard to find it, as you can still get anihilated by high damage. However, if you can find yourself a kill quickly you can snowball the fight. You just need that one initial kill, the issue is that it's extremely hard to reliably get that first pick.

There's still a lot of matchups you can 1v1 even in the late game, but it is much harder to do so reliably and some matchups you would beat out in the early and mid game become close to impossible to 1v1 late. It goes without saying that if you get counterpicked and get to this point you will get absoutely destroyed in the 1v1 and possibly be weaker in teamfights as well.

Typically look to close out the game at a maximum of 25 minutes, anything beyond that and you risk to start falling off big time. The only time this isn't the case is when you have a comp built specifically for Olaf that allows you to go in and chain kill quickly, or if you have Taric. He is the best champion to pair with Olaf, because Olaf will go in and Taric will pop his ult, and during that time he can get a kill and take over a teamfight insanely fast.

Olaf doesn't really have any insane combos, basically every combo he has is very basic. That being said, here are the combos he does have:

SHORT TRADE COMBOS:

+

Basic Attack+ +

These 2 are the combos you will be using most often when looking to short trade, especially the first one. You just quickly throw your Q out and then instantly E. The second one is really good specifically when playing around your E cooldown and looking to use it right as comes up. You can instantly shave off 2 seconds from the remaining cooldown and possibly catch your opponent by surprise, thinking your E is still on cooldown when going in for the trade. Olaf can also use Tiamat mid combs if he has it, but it will make the combo a bit longer, making it possible that the enemy is out of range for the final attack.

FULL BURST COMBO:

+Basic Attack+ + / / + +Basic Attack

This is the highest combo you can do on Olaf to deal maximum damage in the shortest amount of time. You kind of mix the 2 previous combos into it, alongside one of the Tiamat items, 99% of the time Olaf will have at least one of the Tiamat items. Always try to start with throwing out your Q first so you shred armor, so your followup damage is higher.

BERSERKER RAGE (P)

Due to the way your passive works it's best you fight at lower health totals. You do not have to be afraid to fight even if it looks bad when you get lower. You will start to attack much quicker and even gain more and more lifesteal.

Undertow (Q)

Your main chase tool and the ability that sets you up to go in for a kill. Chaining axes one after the other means that unless the enemy has high speed, a ton of dashes, or good slow resistance, they are most likely not getting away and you can run them down hard. You also don't need to wait for the axe to land to use other spells. For example, if you are in melee range and use E first then use Q it would actually take longer because you need to wait for the full E animation before being able to cast Q. But if you use Q first then use E, it will cut a bit of time because you can use your E even as the axe is flying towards the target, as well as making the 2 spells deal that damage closer in time to eachother, possibly surprising your opponent.

TOUGH IT OUT (W)

You don't always need to be at low health to use this ability. You can also use it as an auto attack reset to quickly get more damage in faster. It also means that you can shave of 2 secnds off of your E instantly, if it is on cooldown. The shield itself is very good and it can make it to where you can hard lifesteal and gain up health as they try breaking it.

RECKLESS SWING (E)

Olaf's E usage actually has quite a bit of skill to it that many people don't actively think about. First off, if you are low health the ability will not kill you even if you use it when it would take more health than you have, it just puts you at 1 health. In fights where you are starting to drop lower in health, it can actually be ideal to not use your E, but instead just auto attack away your enemy until they are low enough to die from your E, using it more like an execute. This is because if you are low and you use your E, the fact that you use health when you use it means it can make you die a lot quicker if you use it instantly when it's up. This becomes even more important to do properly if you have lifesteal items, the extra autos will give you quite a bit more health.
The other skilled part to this ability is the interaction it has with his ultimate. If you use your E during your ultimate you can extend it like if you were to auto attack, so you can save it can use it on an enemy that is not in basic attack range to extend the ultimate. It can also be used to bypass the heal cut from Bramble Vest. You can use your E on the target instead of your auto attack, that way you do not get the heal debuff on yourself.
One more thing worth noting: if you start your E animation as an enemy is entering a brush it will cancel and not deal the damage, also stopping your movment for that split second. This also applies to enemies who you lose sight of before the damage goes off, such as from Graves Smokescreen.

RAGNAROK (R)

This is you "go" button. When you use it, you know it's time to go for an all out fight. You are immune to any crowd control, but there are things that can stop you that you need to keep in mind. For example, Anivia W or Jarvan ultimate can both make it to where you cannot extend your ult if used properly. It can actually be completely fine to just straight up ult at the start of a fight. If you are going up against a champion that has little to no mobility and can't push speed away or give themseleves enough distance to outlast your ult, just pop it and you almost always will just kill. On top of that, your ult cooldown starts on cast, meaning the second it is used it starts to tick down in cooldown. If you fight a mega tank like Ornn or Cho'Gath that means you can shave off 15 seconds or even more if you insta pop it.
That being said, there are situations where it's better to save your ult. One of those is when you need to choose between getting a guaranteed solokill or saving your ult for an incoming objective fight. It would be better to save it and use it in the teamfight for a greater impact, unless that 1 target is a high priority one, then use it to take them out before the fight. Another one is when you are split pushing and you know that you can use the initial burst of speed to get on top of a high dps target and take them out quickly so you can more ideally chain kills.

Ravenous Hydra: In my opinion the best item for Olaf by far. It gives him very good stats, the lifesteal is especially good. The active also has very good synergy with him. Because it heals off of your lifesteal it means when Olaf is lower he can use even more lifesteal to get an even bigger heal. It's actually very comical. If you use it on a full minion wave you can heal well over 500 health if you are low enough, and late game if you also have Maw of Malmortius passive when using it, well you can go from 100 hp to 2k in one proc if you hit enough targets.

Experimental Hexplate: Very good item for Olaf. It has perfect synergy with him. It gives him even more power when he uses his ultimate, the speed part especially so, and the ability haste for the ultimate is actually very huge for him. Olaf likes to fight a ton when his ult is up, so this allows you to do that even more while giving you even greater power when you actually do end up using it.

Death's Dance: Very good buy as a third or fourth item, sometimes second in specific matchups. Olaf loves to rush in fully and get into the thick of things. The bleed passive basically provides Olaf a 30% damage reduction, because he is really looking for that first kill as quick as possible. With this item Olaf has a "reset" mechanic quite literally built into him. If you manage to heal off the damage you can typically run through the entire team after that, you get to absolutely destroy them.

Maw of Malmortius: Incredible item if you are going against heavy ability power. Because of how much damage your ult gives upon activation your shield can go all the way to 800 or more with just 1 other item. If you combine it with Ravenous Hydra it means you will heal even more from the active because of its interaction with lifesteal. A single Ravenous usage can get you from 100 to to 2000 if you use it in a minion wave, it is nuts when you have the lifeline passive on.

Sundered Sky: You can do it as your final item if you do your 4 core build, or you can do it as a second item in some specific matchups. It is really good when it comes to the heal and the ability to duel people.

Stridebreaker: Unlike Ravenous Hydra the dueling power of this item is not as high, but the reason you buy it is for the active slow. It allows you to catch up or keep up with a lot of champions, especially ranged champion. You will feel the loss off damage and esepcially not getting the lifesteal, but you must go stride if you want to ensure you can actually catch up to the enemy.

Jak'Sho, The Protean: Very good item for general tankiness. Your ult passive already gives you some armor and magic resist, so with just this one item you can have well over 100 mr and 150 armor. Solid for when you need some tankiness and not as much damage.

Black Cleaver: Olaf already has a shred on his Q, but with this it goes even further. Normally you don't need to dip into both, but it can be very good into champions who want to take heavy armor, such as Malphite, Ornn, Rammus etc. Even against champions who take less armor it can work very well as you hard dip their armor from both shred sources and anihilate them in damage.

Trinity Force: Solid item to take, not much to say here. Olaf's base ad is pretty high and it works really well into matchups where you need to hard duel in melee range and beat them down in a full burst fight.

Sterak's Gage: This item is really good when you have more health into your build from multiple items such as Stridebreaker, Black Cleaver, Sundered Sky etc. Olaf's base ad is also high so the damage you get from it later on is rather solid too. It's also good against some specific champions who have one big burst ability where your entire shield is used to tank through it and win it, such as Darius or Garen ultimate.

Titanic Hydra: The weakest of the 3 Hydra items Olaf considers, but it's not awful. One of the best uses for it is to instantly reduce 3 seconds off of your E cooldown by doing auto+w+titanic proc. It will shave off 3 seconds super quickly and it can let you catch your enemy off guard thinking your e is stil on cooldown.

Spirit Visage: Very good item for Olaf. He already have lifesteal due to his passive so that gets increased from it as well as his w, but if you were to also take Ravenous Hydra and then have the lifeline passive from Maw of Malmortius kick in, you would have 61% lifesteal in the game, which is absolutely insane to think about. Over half the damage you deal you would heal. If you use the Ravenous Hydra proc in a full minion wave you could heal almost 3 THOUSAND health.

Frozen Heart: Very good anti auto attack item. Not really a whole lot to say here. One thing you can do is that you don't need to complete the full item if you don't really need the attack speed reduction, just sit on Warden's Mail and you will still get amazing tankiness.

Spear of Shojin: Not too bad of an item. The ability haste is very good and the damage amp is nice. You can stack it to the full stacks decently fast as you constantly throw axes. The damage amp for your E is also pretty good. Not a bad item at all, just that Olaf usually has better items to take and that he needs to consider.

Blade of the Ruined King: Not a terrible item for Olaf, it's just that he already shreds down tanks rather well, so this item doesn't offer as much value as you might think. It can be used against champions who giga stack health, such as Cho'Gath or Mundo, but even then you can just go for your regular build and still dish out crazy damage.

Chempunk Chainsword: The offensive item for getting heal cut.

Hullbreaker: You won't get this item a lot, at all. However, the one place where it's actually really good is if you win condition is to just hard split push and take towers as fast as you can. It will give you massive push power.

Serpent's Fang: If no one else on your team can buy this item and the enemy team has massive amounts of shields you can take it. If you line up a proper Q you can apply the shield cut to a lot of people, or if you have one of the Hydra items it's even better and easier to apply.

Mortal Reminder: Very underrated item for Olaf. Even though Chempunk Chainsword should be always taken if you want the offensive heal cut choice, this will give you insane damage against heavy armor targets. Having such high armor pen is actually huge. You won't have any bonus health, but if you just want raw damage and 1v1 power this is better, and if you actually luck out and land some crits they will heal HUGE damage.

Wit's End: Not the worst item for Olaf, but it's not something you would consider too often. The tenacity part is kinda wasted because you are immmune to cc during your ultimate, and the overall damage is pretty meh from it, but it can work.

Dead Man's Plate: Not a bad item, can give you some decent speed, but the slow resist is mostly wasted because of your ult. That being said, it's not terrible.

Guardian Angel: This can be a very good last item. Generally in the late game a single teamfight will close out the game, so if you have the revive for that one teamfight you can win it just off of that.

Randuin's Omen: Very good item vs crit damage champs such as Caitlyn, Yasuo, Yone, etc. It will block a ton of damage from them.

Thornmail: The defensive heal cut option. In lane you can buy Bramble Vest against certain matchups and just sit on that.

Kaenic Rookern: Very good magic resist option, but Olaf already has items such as Spirit Visage and Maw of Malmortius, who typically do more for him overall, but it's good vs heavy ap.

Force of Nature: Very good for having a lot of magic resist, and the fact that it gives you up to 15% extra movement speed when fully stacked is actually really good for Olaf, he loves getting a lot of speed.

Olaf actually has very straight forward runes, almost everything is the same each time with no real variations. I have put some interesting choices you can take here from each tree, but again, I like to stick to the standard setup most of the time, even in matchups where a different secondary tree would be different, I might just greed it and still take the standard setup, that's how much I like it. That being said, feel free to experiment and see what works for you and what setup feels good for you. With that being said, here is my explanation for every single possible rune that works on Olaf in my opinion:

KEYSTONE RUNES:

Conqueror: One of two keystone runes you can take on Olaf. Very simple when it comes to keystones, he really does not have a whole lot of diversity. Very reliable, easy to proc for him as you tend to go on in fights a ton, good gamage and sustain, best choice by far.

Lethal Tempo: The second choice for Olaf in terms of keystones. This one can be decent to just sit next to someone and anihilate them with auto attacks a ton of times. In the late game you will easily go over 2.5 attack speed and auto a ton.

RUNE SLOTS:




Triumph: Very consistent rune. It can really help you to clutch out fights with barely any health remaning.


Overheal: Can be taken on Olaf, especially since you will take Ravenous Hydra most of the time, but usually Olaf likes to be at lower health points so he can benefit from his passive. I just put it here because it can be an option.


Legend: Alacrity: You will take this almost every time. Since Olaf is immune to crowd control during his ultimate he does not need the tenacity, but you can also opt for the lifesteal.


Legend: Bloodline: Can be used in a healing focused build or if you really want more lifesteal. It's not bad if you want extra healing, and when you get it fully stacked the 85 health feels pretty decent, it's like having a flat health shard in your runes that gives you even more health.


Last Stand: This is by far the best one from the 3 options. Olaf fights at low health points usually so you will almost always have maximum value from it.







Taste of Blood: You can always proc it on cooldown with your Q. Can be used as a decent sustain option.


Cheap Shot: You can proc it quite a bit in fights as you will always slow people down with Q. Has decent value.


Ghost Poro: If you don't think you will get a lot of takedowns and would rather get stacks off wards and get a bit more vision.


Eyeball Collection: Best one from its respective space generally.


Ingenious Hunter: Can be used in combination with Ravenous Hydra and other active items to give more uses, such as Maw of Malmortius or Sterak's Gage. If you have items with actives on them it can be okay.


Ultimate Hunter: Olaf usually wants to play around his ultimate cooldown, so having it even lower is good.







Nullifying Orb: Can be used decently vs magic damage early on, especially vs hard burst champions where you do one all in you need to win. That being said, it's doesn't have the greatest synergy, but stil usable.

Manaflow Band: Decent mana sustain option.

Nimbus Cloak: Can be pretty good, Olaf likes speed and when you use your Ghost you typically wanna get in there fast.

Gathering Storm: Best one in its respective tree.







Demolish: Solid for turret taking, can take a lt of plates and put pressure on side lane later on.

Shield Bash: Works with Olaf W shield but nothing else, not the greatest but can be used.

Conditioning: More scaling as you get into the mid game, most of the time you want to take this if you are on that tree.


Second Wind: Best rune in its respective space for sustaining in the lane.


Bone Plating: Works best against combo champions like Sett, Riven, Renekton etc.

Revitalize: Best one in its respective tree, increases your W shield and passive lifesteal.







Magical Footwear: Extremely good on Olaf. If you combine this with the 2% movement speed shard in the small rune slots you will not only match, but outrun champions with the base move speed of 340 while they have tier 2 boots. So if they spend 1100 gold for Plated Steelcaps you will be faster than them while you didn't spend any gold on yours.

Tripe Tonic: Solid rune for Olaf. Makes your lvl 6 all in stronger and the skill potion at lvl 9 is also good for him. The reason I don't really take this is because Magical Footwear feels so good for Olaf and they are on the same rune slot.

Biscuit Delivery: A lot of people like to take this for the solid mana sustain,and after gaining a cost on him ultimate and a slight increase on his W it's actually a much more viable choice. I still think if you manage your mana properly it's not super horrible, but it does allow you to spam your spells out a lot more.

Approach Velocity: The best rune for Olaf in this tree by far. It has insane synergy with his Q slow and allows you to catch up to opponents much quicker.

+Very high early game pressure
+Can completely shut down certain matchups and never let them play
+If he gets ganked more often than not he will kill both players, especially whenever his ultimate is up
+He will take over the game by himself if he gets a lead
+Can quite literally walk into 3 or 4 people and kill them all if ahead without problem
+Simple to build and to take runes on, 99% of the time it's the same stuff but still has a lot of adaptability
+His cc immunity allows him to bypass the counterplay of an absurd amount of champions
+High chase power and hard to peel off once he's on you

-He falls off hard into the late game unless you have a comp specifically built around him, or very specifically Taric
-Can be hard counterpicked and completely destroyed, he has some absolutely horrible matchups
-Champions with a ton of dashes or ways to stall out his ult will typically beat him out conistently
-Pre 6 he's actually not as strong as you would expect, he can still do well but it's not as free as you would think and can struggle
-Needs to chain axes into champions with high speed or slow resistance, or else his ultimate will run out and you can get turned on, one axe miss can mean you die instantly