NA Junglers Can’t Play Olaf

Olaf in the NALCS

Olaf The Berserker Courtesy of Riot Games

Olaf is currently sitting at a 0-8 record in the NALCS. The Berserker has only been played in the jungle and has been pulled out by five different junglers. Those junglers include Optics’ William “Meteos” Hartmen, 100 Thieves’ Andy “AnDa” Hoang, TSMs’ Mathew “Akaadian” Higginbotham, Clutch Gamings’ Nam “LirA” Tea-yoo and Golden Guardians’ Juan “Contractz” Garcia.

Meteos and AnDa are the only junglers to pull him out in more than one game, Meteos with two games and AnDa with three. Olaf has a 44 percent presence in the league, being picked eight times and banned 14 times. The champion has a combined Kill Death Assist ratio of 2.2 and has seen a rise in play recently in this league.

Olaf in the Other Major Regions

Olaf has fared better in the other major regions, having an at or above 50 percent win rate in all of them. He has seen the most play in China in the LPL and in Korea in the LCK with 24 and 25 games respectively. Olaf has a 68 percent win rate in LCK  and a 54.2 percent win rate in LPL. Those regions may skew the statistics just by the numbers of games, LPL being a best of two format and LCK being a best of three. In the only other region with the same format as the NALCS, the LEC in Europe, Olaf has been played 14 times with a 71.4 percent win rate.

What’s Wrong With NA Junglers?

Olaf is a hard champion to play professionally. He is the ultimate early game champion with a hard falloff. The champion peaks in the early game and is then pretty useless in the middle to late game, using his ultimate to run into the enemy team and die.

Used properly, Olaf will snowball the early game into an early win or transition his laners out of a tough early game. After 25 minutes he must either flank or position himself very carefully for an engage, neither of those being NALCS teams strengths.

Olaf has also not been put in the best of positions to succeeded in the NALCS. He has been counter picked six out of the eight times he has been chosen, his counters being Camilie, Jarvan IV and Nocturne. He has also not been picked by the best of teams, TSM being the only above .500 team to pull out the unstoppable Viking.

So will Olaf get a win on the NALCS stage? Hopefully, but a top team needs to pull him out because these bottom four teams can’t seem to execute.

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