With the new Olaf skin and his buffs lets take this chance to talk about Olaf

Olaf is fun, im glad he is getting a second look by the balance team, while he is getting looked at it might be time for some good discussion for easy fixes to make everyone's favorite Viking better. Here is a list of universally good and bad things about Olaf.

Q The bad: Q has awkward use scenarios and is unintuitive to use optimally on some occasions. this is both due to the minimum range as well as the scaling slow duration based on distance thrown from olaf (as opposed to the distance from olaf the opponent was hit)

EX1: Olaf is closer than max q range to a close to dead opponent, Throwing the axe way past the opponent will be optimal since the slow duration will be longer and Olaf will have a better chance securing the kill than throwing the axe at the opponents feet.

EX2: Olaf is fighting an opponent with a dash at close range, the opponent jukes the opposite direction of the minimal axe throw. It is still optimal for olaf to go and pick up the axe in most cases rather than chase the opponent adding an unnecessarily high skill floor for olaf players to not be kited and to perma slow opponents.

Olaf feels difficult but oppressive at higher levels of mastery partially because of his q and how short of a window he must secure a kill in (namely the cd of one free form dash)

The W (and passive) the bad: Two large sources of attack speed feel bad together leading to a large amount of free stats that feels less powerful than it is. Overall an under satisfying combination of abilities. The W passive, large amount of free AD on his ultimate and the availability of armor pen lead to armor pen feeling like his only good offensive option early leading to a larger falloff as the game progresses if olaf chooses to go damage.

The good: The W heal increase feels amazing for team coordination and allows olaf to scale well with team support leading to some very high highs for olaf and his/her teammates.

E the bad: the true damage melee nuke sometimes leads to a fairly binary laning phase but this is prevented by max q being the stronger option at the moment. His E scales with large Max HP but none of his other scalings do (I don't count his R passive because in optimal olaf play he shouldn't be soaking much damage outside of his ult activation.

E the good: it makes him hurt in melee range which would be good if it wasn't so impossible to keep him out

R the bad: His Q combined with his ultimate speed boost and cc immunity make it impossible for anyone but kallista to kite olaf when played perfectly. It contributes to his ridiculous skill floor and makes him trend towards being more powerful in competitive play. His ult makes him scale very very well with flat armor pen which don't lead to a strong end game fantasy and health feels like his only option if one wants to scale to late making damage a poor option. Furthermore losing stats doesn't feel very good and forces him to build armor and mr so he wont get nuked when losing his bonus resistances.

Overall hes a fun champion but he has a lot of baggage. the community would love to hear any inhouse discussion about Olaf. Is he getting any more looks? What do you think about Olaf at the moment. Are we waiting till the diver update?

TLDR: hes clunky and doesn't always feel satisfying even when the Olaf player is doing what he should be.

Plz drop any suggestions or complaints you have about Olaf, I would love to get some healthy discussion and the message out to rito.

Thanks, Affinity2