Olaf’s passive is “Berserker Rage” and grants him attack speed and life steal depending on his missing life. This means that the closer you are to death, the more dangerous you become and you can often turn around seemingly hopeless situations.

At level 1, you level up Olaf’s Q “Pull”, in which he hurls an axe into the target area, damaging enemies hit and reducing their armor and movement speed. When Olaf picks up the axe, the cooldown of the ability is reset. Together with your “Attraction” rune, this ability allows you to chase your opponents endlessly as long as you have enough mana. If Olaf hits his axes constantly, opponents have little chance of getting away from him. You can also use this ability in lane to poke or load hit and, of course, to snipe a kill against a target with low health. You maximize Q first, as it offers you the most additional damage and you can use it most often thanks to the resets.

At level 2, you unlock Olaf’s E “Reckless Swing”, where Olaf attacks with such force that his attack causes absolute damage to his target and himself. If his target is destroyed in the process, he regains the health points he spent. In addition, the cooldown of E is reduced by 1 second each time Olaf makes an autoattack. You mainly use this ability to burst or even finish off your opponents. You can also use it to lasthit minions in lane while your autoattack is on cooldown, which you would otherwise lose. The second thing you maximize is the E, because additional points mean less cooldown as well as a lot of extra damage.

From level 3, you also get Olaf’s W “Grit your teeth”, which increases Olaf’s attack speed and grants him a shield depending on his missing life. The less HP Olaf has, the bigger this shield is and, together with your passive, you can effectively bait your opponents thanks to the W and then attack them with the shield and heal yourself. The W is also an autoattack reset, so it’s best to use it directly after an autoattack for additional damage (AA->W->AA). You maximize the W last, as the size of the shield already scales with your missing life anyway and you are more dependent on the additional damage from leveling Q and E.

As usual, you level Olaf’s ultimate ability “Ragnarök” at levels 6, 11 and 16, which gives Olaf passive armor and magic resistance. You can also activate the ultimate to become immune to incapacitating effects while Olaf is attacking. This immunity lasts 3 seconds, but can be extended by 2.5 seconds each through autoattacks and the E. Theoretically, the ult can therefore last indefinitely as long as you are able to attack targets. When activated, Olaf also gains additional movement speed for 1 second when moving towards enemies. Thanks to the ult, Olaf is able to simply run at the enemy carries regardless of losses and ignore any CC from their teammates. This makes Olaf a very good choice against teams with a lot of CC, who often have less damage in return and then don’t manage to kill Olaf before he has finished off their carries.