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Vladimir will always be a decent or strong champion for your team in the top lane or mid lane depending on your ability to play him. Vladimir can be your teams AP-Carry in team fights, he can be your Tanky-Mage due to his passive if your team is looking for a brick wall that constantly keeps rejuvenating and finally the mixture of both which is very annoying once late game arrives.

Specifically speaking Vladimir is a great choice when the enemy team chooses a high burst laner against you, this favours Vlad due to his Sanguine Pool being able to negate all quick burst damage combos and all in's by the the enemy laner. Once their combos are all gone you have a free canvas to work with and you can use all your high damaging abilities to your full use.

Whilst Vladimir however is a very flexible carry in your mid/top lane role, like every champion he is far from perfect and there are times where it may be best to go a different champion depending on your team comp. For example if you are laned against a HIGH SCALING CARRY (looking at you Nasus) and you are doubtful in shutting them down early due to your lack of damage. It may be best to put Vladimir aside. Additionally, recognise that your team may need Crowd Control or they might need more AD rather than AP damage and cater for these gaps.

Phase Rush: I went into further detail in my "Keystones" section just above, but to summarise this rune allows us to have great potential to not get outkited in team fights, but also provide us with a great gap closer and excape tool throughout the whole game, taking Phase Rush means we can swap out Ghost for more kill potential summoner spells in order to get ahead early.
Nimbus Cloak: Is a must on Vladimir. Taking it means that we can gap close when we pop our ultimate and go in for the kill. Vlad's ult means him and his team deal extra damage whilst it's infecting thee enemy. Using Nimbus Cloak means that we can stay on our enemy and use all of our abilities to kill.
Transcendence: Is Brilliant for this rune set up. Our goal with taking Transcendence is to achieve 45% Cooldown Reduction as quickly as we can. Vlad's Transfusion is super beneficial to him when we can get it as often as possible. A must take.
Gathering Storm: allows for extra late game potential, taking this means the longer the game runs, the more damage Vladimir gets. Whilst Vlad already is a great scaling champion, sometimes it might not be enough to carry. With this extra boost, you will be seeing results.
Magical Footwear: Great to take for a scaling champion. The more kills we get in the early game, the cheaper our boot upgrade becomes. We are looking to only purchase items increasing cooldown reduction early game eg. Kindlegem and Fiendish Codex so being granted free boots and cheaper boots is an added bonus.
Cosmic Insight: Means we can increase our Cooldown Recuction by an extra 5% allowing our abilities to be availble more frequently mid-late game. If you are going down the Inspiration Tree, a must take


Second in line, my preference for Vladimir going down the Domination Tree.