PBE Preview: Olaf Rework - Axes On Trees

While the 3.10 PBE cycle brought a number of changes, they were mostly scrapped because they weren't intended to go live on 3.10. However, the long awaited Olaf rework wasn't on there, and as such, has finally hit the PBE.

Olaf was a dominant force during the end of Season 2, and with beginning of Season 3, the Riot Nerf Hammer of Doom put a quick end to his berserking, and after the nerfs, his playrate dropped to the point where he was literally never picked in the European LCS after the Spring Qualifiers, and North America has the same. The nerfs at the time included changes to his Undertow where the slow it induced would decay over time; a change to Vicious Strikes where the cooldown was significantly increased; and a change to Ragnarok where the passive Armor Penetration was shifted to the Active of Ragnarok. This dropped his sustain in lane and his power during later stages of the game and made him a less dominant force.

In fact, his power level has dropped to the point where he has, at a certain point, beenthe least played champion the league. Nerf Hammer of Doom OP. So Riot is not directly reverting the changes, because that would make him 'broken' again, but has a few changes in store for him. What are these?

First changes are to his Undertow. While it sounds contradictory to what I just said, Riot is in fact reverting the change they made to Undertow, where the slow would decay over time. The new Olaf has his Undertow slow for the full amount for the full duration, which is a QoL change that improves his stickiness to targets. Additionally, to make his Undertow feel less like a hit-or-miss skillshot, another change - one that I'm really fond of, in fact - is where his axe will now stick onto walls if it were to end up in impassable terrain, allowing it to be picked up.

This is a nice change, because this helps his jungle a bit - there's not much worse than losing an axe in the jungle - but his laning and chasing potential is lots better too, because there's a smaller chance - next to no chance, in fact - where you'll lose your axe. On the other hand, a small compensation to it is that it now has a minimum cast range (currently set at 400). Why is this a nerf? Because part of jungle Olaf's prowess  came from his insane clear speed where he would throw his axe point-blank and have it nearly immediately reset, allowing for indefinite linking of axes. Now Olaf has to move a bit in order for it to reset, which takes the spamming edge off him.

 

Next is Vicious Strikes. Vicious Strikes served - and serves - as Olaf's primary sustain tool. Currently it provides him with a percentage LifeSteal and SpellVamp, as well as additional damage on his auto-attacks for a few seconds. What the Nerf Hammer of Doom did, was vastly increase the cooldown on it, drastically decreasing Olaf's lanestay and sustain potential, as well as removing some of his sustained dueling power (note that sustained dueling power and sustain are two separate things).

The current rework removes the Spell Vamp completely, because you'd rarely get more than 1 Undertow and 1 Reckless Swing off, and the latter even costs health, so why bother. Additionally, the %HP scaling on the bonus AD gained is removed as well, shifting the attention of Olaf's main build a bit, because health was that effective on Olaf because of Vicious Strikes. If the Nerf Hammer wasn't already running overtime, the Lifesteal is also going down a notch. This seems like a hard hit because up until now, this skill has only gotten nerfed. However, its mana cost is going down on each level, which is a tiny bonus. Then the AD gained from the skill is going up as-is, meaning the %HP scaling being removed is being compensated for.

Thirdly, Olaf is going to gain increased healing for each %HP he is missing. This makes him a deceptively strong duelist at low levels - which is already was due to Berserker Rage - beacuse he duels more sustainedly (is that a word?) the lower he gets on HP.

 

Reckless Swing is not really broken in and of itself, but it did provide a good chunk of dueling power due to the true damage it dealt. With the SpellVamp being removed from Vicious Strikes, this skill had a few new issues, especially with the removed mana cost a long time ago. The cooldown is going up, quite frankly because 340 true damage on a 5s cooldown is a lot of damage in prolonged fights. In addition, the damage is going down because 340 true damage is a lot of true damage on a non-ultimate cooldown.

On the other hand, the health cost - the rebound of the axes from his target's health, if you will - is going down a bit, to compensate for both the damage drop and the lack of SpellVamp. But the nicest change this skill gets, is that its cooldown is going to get reduced by a bit, each time he slaps someone with an auto-attack, meaning he becomes a better duelist in longer fights, rather than quick bursts.

 

Last skill is Ragnarok, his ultimate. It's getting changed quite a bit.The mana cost is getting dropped all together. I like this change because it allows Olaf to make a run for his money if he loses a prolonged fight which drained his mana hardcore.

Secondly, he's getting passive Armor and Magic Resist as he ranks up the skill. This adds to his dueling power, which is good. But then there's the active. It retains the "I dont care about your CC" aspect of it, meaning they don't change what Olaf's supposed to do in team fights. But upon activation, the passive effect of the Armor and MR is disabled - awwh? - but he gets a free Tiamat in return. No, not literally, he's not getting a 7th item. But he gains an amount of AD, and his auto-attacks start splashing for a % of his AD.

Once again, this improves his dueling skill, meaning he's really going to become a sustained fighter more than a "I charge your carry and kill him" kinda guy.

 

To compensate for his dropped and reduced mana costs, he's getting less base mana and mana per level. That's fair enough. I do feel as if he's going to 'require' a really tanky build in order to perform his job, which leads me to believe that his other base stats - AD, Armor and HP Regen - need to be looked at as well, similar to what they did to Master Yi. Just carefully tuning those makes me feel a lot safer about facing him and countering him in lane, as well as keeping him a bit within-the-lines as I play him myself.

What do you guys think of the changes? Does he need something else? Let me know in the comment section below. See ya next time.