Welcome to the glass cannon spotlight part ¾. Today we’ll be covering Olaf, Poppy, Sion, and Skarner. This series is nearing it’s completion. For the final week we’ll cover Trundle, Udyr, Volibear, Warwick, and Yorick. Without wasting any more time let’s jump right into Olaf.
Olaf
Type: CC Immune/Lifesteal/AoE Poke/Lots of Problems.
Olaf Is a champion I originally didn’t want to write about for a Glass Cannon Carry. While he does have CC immunity which is something a lot of champions would enjoy, his kit isn’t as well suited for the job. Olaf has a True damage spell which becomes completely wasteful to use without cdr/health. His passive grants attack speed based on missing health, so in order to take advantage of this and not be at a point where you will die is to get some health. His W grants damage based on health, but does provide a flat lifesteal/spell vamp. As a result it is very hard to get away with building a standard hard carry build on Olaf. However there is one build that helps you get around all these problems while amplifying Olaf’s offenses. The key to playing Glass cannon Olaf is to lock your foes in place and be a secondary tank for killing enemies.
Core Items: Trinity Force, Frozen Mallet
Trinity force is your source of all the stats you need to excel. It rewards you for casting your abilities even your true damage if it feels meaningless, as a certain point will come where a critical strike will do more damage than that true damage. It also synergizes with using the time to pick up your axe and throw it again.
Frozen Mallet provides a slow on your auto attacks. This increases your chase potential greatly and synergizes well with the rage passive from trinity force. When you land an axe it guaranteed at least an auto attack to slow. Frozen mallet is important to chance down your enemies. These two items both give health and will become more effective with the next items, and synergize with your kit.
Follow Up Items: Atmas Impaler, Maw of Malmortius
Atmas takes the bonus health you have built and turns it into damage. This item has been nerfed a long while back but it is still strong. It provides a good amount of armor, and some critical strike. It overall can increase your damage by quite a bit. Since olaf needs health to synergize with his kit, why not build an item that synergizes with that?
Maw of Malmortius provides magic resistance and a shield. The damage you get as your health drops synergizes with his passive of attack speed. This item is one of the more reliable damage and magic resist item on olaf.
Roles: Top, Jungle
Poppy
Type: Burst/Single Target/Diplomatic Immunity
Poppy is regarded as one of the strongest late game champions. She is noted for her poor laning phase and her mana starvation. While you may not realize it Poppy’s damage out put isn’t limited to how much damage she actually does. Poppy benefits highly from mobility because it is what allows her to stick to her targets. Her W is simply not enough. The idea behind poppy is that you want to be able to stick to your enemy and get as many Devastating blows off within the time limit of Diplomatic Immunity. Late game her ultimate enables her to isolate target damage and generally be able to completely dive through teams/towers. However since most people do not cast it on their designated target, they lose out on a 40% damage increase. A lot of people will tell you it is “wrong to focus who you Ulti” because you will end your ultimate prematurely if you kill them. However you should ulti their carry as you will most likely remove their major source of damage from the fight instantly. Assuming your team will be there for you after the job is done, you should not be afraid to ulti their carry if it’s a guaranteed kill. The time where you should not ulti their carry is when you need to be alive to peel for yours or take out tanks; in this case you should Ulti the person with the lowest damage/crowd control.
Core Items: Trinity Force, Phantom Dancer
Trinity’s Passives become major to Poppy’s gameplay. The sheen provides the mana and damage you need to win trades. It should be an early pick up. After you completely trinity force Poppy reaches a huge damage spike. She then becomes able to fight more effectively. One of the more important aspects next to spell blade is having the %movement speed and Rage passive to chase down your targets. You ultimate has a lot of range but try to avoid casting it from max range as they can run from you.
Phantom Dancer is the second core item because it grants attack speed and movement speed. This will allow poppy to stick to her targets and take advantage of her W. Keep in mind you want to activate your W when people are running, not to get in or start a fight. If you use the movement speed prematurely you could lose out on chase potential. With phantom dancer you can quickly stack your W so you aren’t forced to use it. On top of that the critical strike damage is all amplified by Diplomatic Immunity so you can have insane damage on crits. While the bonus damage on Devastating blue does not critical strike, the rest of it does.
Follow Up items: Shurelya’s Reverie, Zephyr
Shurelya’s is an amazing item on poppy, it provides a small amount of health with mana regeneration and cdr. The active allows her to chase as well as start team fights off. It also builds from the philostone which is a very common early GP10 item on poppy. It also grants an escape when split pushing.
Zephyr adds extra mobility and tenacity for when your ultimate is not available. The attack speed/cdr scales with your kit and allows you to get more devastating blows off. You can always choose to opt for something else like a frozen heart.
Roles: Mid/Top. Poppy can win some top lane match ups, but she is better off going mid where she can avoid/farm those match ups. Poppy can jungle but it is a little bit tricky and does not grant the much needed farm.
Sion
Type: Stun/Infinite Health Scaling/Lifesteal Tank
I do not have a lot to say on Sion, his gameplay is very basic. You want to farm as much health as possible, lock down targets with your stun, then use your ultimate to tank out large groups of enemies or be impossible to duel. Sion’s ultimate also grants bonus attack speed which synergizes well with his E. The key to playing sion is to pick up an early lifesteal item then go for mobility and attack speed. The reason I avoided sion until now is he is a lot better as an AP Mid lane as opposed to the AFK farm dependent carry. Sion can gank as a Carry but he suffers when chasing and will need the items that help him stick to enemies. The key to playing sion is to make sure you are always attacking something, even if it is a tank
Core Items: Phantom Dancer, Hydra
Phantom dancer is a must on sion for chasing down his targets as well as taking advantage of his E’s steroid. On top of that critical strike brings a burst in both healing and damage when fighting with your ultimate up. Sion does not need damage items early, just a little life steal to sustain through the self damage on his e.
After PD you want to get a Hydra for easy wave clear and farming, on top of that it’ll provide the AoE healing cleave in the team fights. Sions core is simple and easily explainable.
Follow up Items: Infinity Edge, Last Whisper
Infinity Edge adds the extra burst in kills which increases your damage and healing while under the life steal effects.
Last Whisper allows you to heal from hitting even tanks. This is very important because sion cannot chase targets without losing massive amounts of damage potential, and tons of health. Your final item should be something that helps you stick to targets like a frozen mallet.
Roles: Mid, Top, Jungle: Jungle sion is pretty tricky and you will need to focus on buying items that allow for ganks likecutlass and phage. However if you can get lanes lanes ahead you can scale/farm up.
Skarner
Type: AoE/Spam Caster/ Suppression/ Mobility/Permaslow
Skarner is one of the strongest glass cannon tank carries. He has the ability to keep people permaslowed, and a suppression. On top of that he has a cooldown reduction per basic attack passive. What that means is skarner is literally able to cast skills at a ridiculous rate to further increase his DPS. The key to playing Glass cannon skarner is to combine items that increase your attack speed and cdr, as well as ones who synergize with that increase. The mistake people make is they feel if they build skarner glass he won’t be tanky. However that is not the case because the more he attacks the more often his shield is up. He also will have lifesteal/spell vamp on top of his E that heals. Unless skarner is getting bursted or stun locked he can sustain heavily through fights and deal tons of damage. Skarner is also good at picking off targets with his suppression if he finds them alone. Other things to note is you should always take blue buff when playing Glass skarner as the spam in abilities will drain through your mana. When your shield is up you also have increased attack speed which lowers the cooldown of your shield even further.
Core Items: Trinity Force, Zephyr
Trinity provides a mix of stat that skarner scales well to. On top of that the rage passive allows him to easily chase down his foes and stick to them with his perma slow. The spell blade proc does the highest damage at level 18 on skarner compared to all other champions because he has the highest base damage (tied with cho gath). This should be core on almost every skarner build.
Zephyr is the source of even more movement speed, attack speed, and cdr with some damage. This item is very important to you as the cdr and attack speed will scale well with each other. The tenacity is to keep you from being locked down in fights or kited. If you want you can combo this with boots of swiftness to hinder all slow attempts. The more auto attacks you do, the more abilities you can spam.
Follow Up items: Shurelya’s, Gunblade
Shurelya’s enables skarner to have an active to chase down his targets, but more importantly it grants much needed mana regen and cdr. The active will help skarner get in range to ultimate lone kills and the cdr will allow him to keep his abilities active. The need for mana regen comes when you do not have blue buff, spamming abilities on low cooldowns even with their low mana cost can easily turn skarner Oom.
Gunblade is a great follow up item to these two because it will allow him to life steal and heal from his abilities causing even further increase in his sustained fighting. Skarner scales decently to the damage and ability power it grants. The spell vamp is proced his his most spamable ability and life steal on his autos. On top of that the more often you attack the more your gunblades passive is available.
Afterwards you may want to get a wits end, your cdr should be fully capped with these 2 items and blue buff. It will help you live through burst and grant you bonus magic damage. The attack speed even further helps your passive.
Roles: Mid, Jungle: Skarner can top lane but it reduces his ability to gank. You want to have a lot of presence as skarner the second you hit 6 or even before that if you are jungle. He is extremely hard to duel throughout all points in the game.
That sums up this article. The final part to my series will be happening soon™.
