Hi and welcome to my Olaf Top Lane Viking guide which I decided to put together and publish as I have a lot of success with it personally.

Olaf is a great champion that can be utilised in a number of ways. This build is focused on cooldowns (CDR) and going for an offtank build, in order to stay alive long enough to smash the enemy carry spamming your E skill.

I hope you find this useful and if so please leave feedback. Any suggestions are welcome too :D

Please do not just randomly downvote my guide if you have not tried it out. As stated feedback and comments are appreciated

With Masteries I go 9/21/0

Our focus will be on adding some Cooldown Reduction (CDR) as well as some eaxtra armour (ARM), magic resist (MR) and health (HP).

This is why i max out in the defense tree.

In the attack tree I take points in attack speed (AS) as well as armour pen (ARP).

Starting Items

+ + +
Starting with these allows me to stay in lane for a good amount of time before heading back.


Early Game:


This should be your first purchase on your trip back, I usually also get a ward and so this will set you back 900G but with some nice farming this should easily be do-able and using teleport you will be back in the action in no time! Heart of gold is excellent for top lane Olaf as you gain 5G per 10secs which adds up to the farming and getting it this early will net you around 1,000G profit by the time you sell it



Next up is your boots of Lucidity. Important as we are aiming for max CDR in this build.


Mid Game:


This item is fantastic for a champion like Olaf. It gives you a large amount of HP, allows you to stick to your fleeing enemies and gives some AD too.




Next on the list should be the Glacial Shroud. This will take you to somewhere between 30-40% CDR which is fine for now so no need to complete it all the way through to frozen heart unless you need the armour.

Late Game:


This works well with your passive, your masteries and runes. The HP steal is great and when buffed deals 100dmg per strike. It will also allow you to take out the enemy carry a LOT faster



This item is great on olaf as it works alongside your passive giving you bonus dmg for each part of your HP you are missing. This combined with bloodthirster and the passive (gives a damage absorbing sheild) will keep you alive along enough to escape most battles whilst grabbing a kill or assist yourself.


I will then finish off my frozen heart. This can be inbetween the maw depending on whether you need the extra ARM or MR/AD more.


As for the final item...that is totally up to you and totally game dependent. You may need extra MR, ARM, HP, AD or even AS. Here are some suggestions, see what works best for you:

The most important part of playing Olaf and being successful is learning how to utilise his Q skill well. In games i rarely miss with it when chasing down fleeing champs and getting it maxed first allows it do deal a lot of DMG making it a great harassment tool, but also slowing enemies rather heavily.

The reason I max Q first is because of the recent patch made to Olaf's skills. Now the DMG of Q increases with each level rather than being based off of your AD.

I then take 1 point in W and then proceed to max out E second, obviously taking points in R whenever possible. Your E skill will scale into your main source of dmg and the ability to deal 340 true dmg every few secs will have your enemies fearing you!

I leave W for last as although a great skill, it is mainly used as a way to heal off farm in early game, with E a lot more important for killing enemies fast later due to the True DMG

Starting Items

+ + +
Starting with these allows me to stay in lane for a good amount of time before heading back.


Early Game:


This should be your first purchase on your trip back, I usually also get a ward and so this will set you back 900G but with some nice farming this should easily be do-able and using teleport you will be back in the action in no time! Heart of gold is excellent for top lane Olaf as you gain 5G per 10secs which adds up to the farming and getting it this early will net you around 1,000G profit by the time you sell it



Next up is your boots of Lucidity. Important as we are aiming for max CDR in this build.


Mid Game:


This item is fantastic for a champion like Olaf. It gives you a large amount of HP, allows you to stick to your fleeing enemies and gives some AD too.




Next on the list should be the Glacial Shroud. This will take you to somewhere between 30-40% CDR which is fine for now so no need to complete it all the way through to frozen heart unless you need the armour.

Late Game:


This works well with your passive, your masteries and runes. The HP steal is great and when buffed deals 100dmg per strike. It will also allow you to take out the enemy carry a LOT faster



This item is great on olaf as it works alongside your passive giving you bonus dmg for each part of your HP you are missing. This combined with bloodthirster and the passive (gives a damage absorbing sheild) will keep you alive along enough to escape most battles whilst grabbing a kill or assist yourself.


I will then finish off my frozen heart. This can be inbetween the maw depending on whether you need the extra ARM or MR/AD more.


As for the final item...that is totally up to you and totally game dependent. You may need extra MR, ARM, HP, AD or even AS. Here are some suggestions, see what works best for you:

The most important part of playing Olaf and being successful is learning how to utilise his Q skill well. In games i rarely miss with it when chasing down fleeing champs and getting it maxed first allows it do deal a lot of DMG making it a great harassment tool, but also slowing enemies rather heavily.

The reason I max Q first is because of the recent patch made to Olaf's skills. Now the DMG of Q increases with each level rather than being based off of your AD.

I then take 1 point in W and then proceed to max out E second, obviously taking points in R whenever possible. Your E skill will scale into your main source of dmg and the ability to deal 340 true dmg every few secs will have your enemies fearing you!

I leave W for last as although a great skill, it is mainly used as a way to heal off farm in early game, with E a lot more important for killing enemies fast later due to the True DMG

PROS:

+ Strong poke/harass skill
+ Passive skills work great alongside the right items
+ Invunerable to CC with Ultimate
+ A frickin Viking dude!


CONS:

- Can be hard to use well
- Needs great use of Q skill to be useful during teamfights
- Relies on a team with good coordination

I thought I would add a section here on teamfights as it is an area where you can struggle with Olaf as I did originally.

Usually your job will be the anti-carry, you will want to chase down and eliminate the enemy carry asap. Popping ghost and your ultimate should usually suffice whilst spamming your skills to take them down.

The key here is to use your Q well to chase down any fleeing carry. It is also useful to use the Q to whittle down enemy HP before the fight starts.

However it is very important that your team are committed to the fight before you charge in, I have had circumstances where a teammate will back out causing others to pull back suddenly and you have just wasted your ghost and ultimate. This is extremely frustrating. That said in higher elo's this rarely happens. Just make sure everyone is committed before you roll in like a baws!

Thank you for reading through my guide. I hope you get to test this out and find it useful!

Please do leave comments and suggestions as I will be updating this guide often with more information to come soon.