Vladimir Build Guide by GrandmasterD

Theory of maddness. +

I think Cassi counters Vlad hard in mid ;o

Thank you jhoijhoi, Keondre, Xaioli, and LaCorpse for the amazing sigs!

Renekton: Rampant Renekton Ezreal: Internet Explorer Ezreal

Riven: Reverent Riven

Read about my climb through Plat on CN here

As far as Vladimir plays, I see a lot of problems with this guide. But first, the positives.

You have an amazing layout, I would highly recommend making another guide if you continue to use this, it's possibly of one the cleanest ways of putting your information out there and it avoids putting useless information in between.

And now for the negatives.

• Firstly, I understand your want to make Vladimir jacked up on CDR, however that's not where his strength lies. His strength is in that of high amounts of AP that cause his Transfusion to hit for high amounts. So I can understand why you want to build a Glacial Shroud, but you use a lot of unnecessary money getting large amounts of mana that are wholeheartedly useless on Vladimir.
• Secondly, I'm not even sure where you planned to go with this, but in your masteries you've put points into Brute Force .
• Thirdly, Heal and Ignite are both good summoner spells, and it's all preference, but I find Flash is a strong escape move in combination with your Sanguine Pool.
• Fourthly, not taking Hemoplague at levels 6, 11, and 16 seems to be... well odd. However, I can understand not taking it at level 6 in top lane if you truly have that many problems. The difference is that in mid, they can be bursted down and killed, so it's worth taking it at level 6. As for 11 and 16, my problems with that lie in the fact that you take Hemoplague instead at levels 17 and 18, which compared to Sanguine Pool, which shouldn't be used for offensive (Excluding team fights, where it can be very useful being used offensively) purposes, is much weaker in terms of damage. Vladimir's ultimate is extremely strong, and by levels 17 and 18, one can assume many teamfights have been fought. By this point, you really should have all three points in Hemoplague and Sanguine Pool should be put on the back burner until after it.

Vladimir

^hf with that one.

Have you ever tried spellvamp quints btw? I'm a big fan of movement speed, but on vlad I think SV might be worth looking into as an alternative, perhaps for more sustain in tough matchups like Yorick?

Thanks to Xiaowiriamu for the sig!

he likes the MS cuz you are faster.. cpt. obvious strikes again.

he said that SV quints are definitely good on him but he'd usually/most of the time go for MS
I got yelled at when I said I had them :( :D

Axyn wrote:

As far as Vladimir plays, I see a lot of problems with this guide. But first, the positives.

You have an amazing layout, I would highly recommend making another guide if you continue to use this, it's possibly of one the cleanest ways of putting your information out there and it avoids putting useless information in between.

And now for the negatives.

• Firstly, I understand your want to make Vladimir jacked up on CDR, however that's not where his strength lies. His strength is in that of high amounts of AP that cause his Transfusion to hit for high amounts. So I can understand why you want to build a Glacial Shroud, but you use a lot of unnecessary money getting large amounts of mana that are wholeheartedly useless on Vladimir.
• Secondly, I'm not even sure where you planned to go with this, but in your masteries you've put points into Brute Force .
• Thirdly, Heal and Ignite are both good summoner spells, and it's all preference, but I find Flash is a strong escape move in combination with your Sanguine Pool.
• Fourthly, not taking Hemoplague at levels 6, 11, and 16 seems to be... well odd. However, I can understand not taking it at level 6 in top lane if you truly have that many problems. The difference is that in mid, they can be bursted down and killed, so it's worth taking it at level 6. As for 11 and 16, my problems with that lie in the fact that you take Hemoplague instead at levels 17 and 18, which compared to Sanguine Pool, which shouldn't be used for offensive (Excluding team fights, where it can be very useful being used offensively) purposes, is much weaker in terms of damage. Vladimir's ultimate is extremely strong, and by levels 17 and 18, one can assume many teamfights have been fought. By this point, you really should have all three points in Hemoplague and Sanguine Pool should be put on the back burner until after it.

I hope you've actually taken the time to look through these and consider them, and while I realize that it's mostly negative comments i'd still like to say that your guide is definitely well thought out and specialized to be different from the classic Vladimir builds.

• First, CDR means he has a ton of sustain + harass since the CD on his Q goes down. Additionally, Vladimir's damage comes more from dps than burst since his scalings aren't that high. Glacial Shroud hardcounters almost all top laners since it provides a huge chunk of armour and 15% CDR which allows you to harass more often.
• Not gonna discuss this. Every decent player should know by now that Brute Force > Mental Force especially with Vlad's scalings and cool downs. It makes it easier to last-hit and it also allows for stronger autohit harass.
• I list four summoner spells I find viable. My personal preferred setup is Heal + Ignite since it makes you really hard to showdown, even in the early levels. Also, healbaiting is just too much fun. However, I'm not saying you should take these spells.
• Why I skill it up at 17 and 18 has been explained earlier in the comments (someone asked the same question) yet I didn't include that in the guide. I advise you to read my answer to it.
• I doubt that you even gave this setup a try for, let's say, 10-20 games. Also, I've the idea you're mistaking Vladimir for a burst mage rather than a dps mage. His scalings aren't amazing, his base damages are. This means he doesn't need a lot of ap to actually deal a lot of damage. I'm abusing this fact by stacking armour like a madman which renders almost all bruisers completely helpless against you since they will deal no damage. Since we are working with his base damages and not his scalings; CDR helps us to dish out his base damages more often.

• CDR really lowers his Q and makes his sustain go through the roof, I don't think anyone is ignoring that. And armor i'm also sure shuts down the top bruisers, but what i'm saying is that you waste hundreds of gold getting mana that is absofruitely useless on Vladimir. I would just think about getting other items that give the same stats, perhaps a Chain Vest that builds into a Zhonya's Hourglass and for CDR how about just running the CDR boots, having the 4% from Sorcery , and Spirit Visage. That gives you 29% CDR and frankly that's quite a lot. If you want the last 11% get a Deathfire Grasp late game.
• The Brute Force vs Mental Force argument is news to me, i'm going to have to research that a bit.
• I could always say, "Yeah, the 200 extra magic damage gets me my kills as the enemy team scatters after a team fight" and it does, but it also deals a heavy amount of damage compared to the damage of Sanguine Pool. Won't even argue that point much further.
• Vlad doesn't scale amazingly well, but he definitely scales. He has .6 on his main damage source ( Transfusion) and a .7 on Hemoplague. Compared to other mages, he's not that far off. Then you need to consider the fact that when you empower his Ability Power, you gain a strong amount of health in return, which makes you slightly tankier, and combining that with the high levels of AP, means you have high health (for a mage), high returns of health from spell vamp, and large damage output.

Vladimir