For one Vlad is not your average ap champion. He has great survivability, and can be used as bait for your teammates. His passive allows him to be very tanky and his q and e allow you to harrass and farm easily. His ultimate takes the cake because it's like a stronger ignite and allows you to focus on other enemies if your certain your ult will kill them. His pool can also save allies by slowing them and giving your teammate a chance. Having lots of spellvamp makes vlad a tank in his own right. All in all Vlad can be very useful in 3v3 and should not be taken lightly.

You'll want to start with the boots, tome and health potions to help you survive and harrass either bottom or top lane. Wait until you have enough to get your sorcerer boots and, if possible, another tome. Upgrade to hextech and then try to either get a needlessly large rod or a giants belt. Get wooglets next and a kindlegem for extra health and some more cooldown reduction. Upgrade to spirit visage or upgrade your crystal next (the health regen from visage is awesome though). Upgrade to will of the ancients, the spellvamp will give you a lot more health regen from skills. The last one is based off what you might be facing, either armor(Zhonya's) for more ad offense or MR(Abyssal) for more ap team. I do love Zonya's though, because it makes you untargetable just like his pool. This can really upset people lol.

I like this rune setup, but a movement speed would be nice. Normally I will just use flash and ghost so that kiting an enemy, chasing one down, or trying to survive is easy. Sometimes you may have to go ignite based on teammates spell selection.

I have my mastery setup this way for three reasons. 1. Because movement speed rules for any caster. 2. Because the cooldown reduction is key, so that you don't have to buy items for cdr. 3. The extra gold is awesome for Vlad early. You can even get a blasting wand off the bat if you want(which is why movement speed runes would be good for early game).

Make sure you pour points into your q(or 1 spell) early. Get pool as your lvl2 point to watch out for early ganks. Get your e third and then just go q and e until lvl 6 of course, but then continue. Upgrade pool all the way last.

While farming be careful not to overextend. Going more than halfway is sometimes not the best idea, especially if they have junglers. Farm as much as you can from lanes and jungle what you can until your mins have been pushed back. This will allow you to survive more and gain gold faster. The mastery point will also give you extra gold every 10 secs, so you will be fine.