Vladimir is a champ that I’ve had trouble getting a handle on. When I faced him he seemed to put out immense damage and just generally be something of a bully. However, when I played as him, I felt like I could do no damage and found myself having to go back frequently after trading and burning through all my Health Potions.

And while I’m not quite up to feeling like I can carry with him, I do feel like I’ve gotten a better handle on him and the epiphany was thus.

Tides of Blood increases your self-healing, which means that Transfusion is more effective if used after you’ve cast Tides of Blood. Learning this simple factoid helped considerably with the sustain issues I had experienced when I had played Vlad in the past.

And really since you don’t hit your stride until level 9 or so, you pretty much only care about sustaining well enough to farm and keep you lane opponent honest by poking them enough to keep them in lane so they can’t go off and do other nasty things to your team.

And note that you are probably going to have to manage on your own, since as A) you don’t do that much damage until you get a few ranks in Transfusion and B) you have no hard CC, a lot of jungles will just avoid ganking for you unless your lane opponent is just begging for it. E.g pushed up well beyond the halfway point of the river.

The other little tips are that if you have the health for it, keep Tides of Blood at 4 stacks as much as possible. Yeah, it is a little tedious, but it tremendously increases you damage output and your sustain. Though do note that the health cost increases by 25% for each stack.

You can stack it away from the minion wave if you don’t want to push or at such an angle that you only last hit low health creeps with it, so again, as long as you have the health for it or can get it back via Transfusion don’t be afraid to keep it at 4 stacks.

There may be better ways to do this, but from what I’ve found so far, if you do want to push and aren’t being harassed then go stand between the melee minions and the ranged minions when casting Tides of Blood to damage the most targets and then finish off low health creeps with Transfusion and auto attacks.

An idea trade would look something like auto attack, Tides of Blood, auto attack, [Transfusion]], auto attack, However due to Vlad’s short range this can be difficult to setup and pull off. And some times you are just going to need to be satisfied with tagging them with Transfusion, especially if you don’t want tor risk pushing the minion wave.

Oh, finally you want to use Hemoplague at the start of a trade rather than as finisher as it amplifies all damage to the target by 12% for the next 5 seconds, including minion aggro and Ignite. However, casting it is a clear sign that you want to fight, so it is best used after you or your jungler, via a gank, have baited out any abilities that they might be able to use to escape.

Match-ups

vs. Gnar - Mostly a farm lane as he has quite a few tools to use to disengage if you try to go aggro on him. Generally save Sanguine Pool for when he trys to engage on you or for when his jungler shows up, however if you are caught out in the open and need to dodge Boomerang Throw you can pool to make it miss.

Start Boots and 4 Health Potions and use the movement speed from the boots to dodge his Boomerang Throw.

It is hard to poke him with both Tides of Blood and Transfusion without leaving a window where he can hit you with Boomerang Throw, so use Tides of Blood to last hit a couple of minions and then tag him with Transfusion unless you need it to secure a last hit on a minion.

He is likely to autoattack the minions a lot to build up his rage. Just match him autoattack for autoattack to keep his minion wave from pushing. As long as you have enough health to use Tides of Blood he can't outpush you.

If you have a decent teamfighting composition don't sweat trying to kill Gnar, just poke him enough to keep him honest, farm up, and scale into mid-late game. If you don't have a great team fighting team (you probably shouldn't have picked Vladimir), then advocate for your jungler to swing by and help you get ahead so you can get to unholy terror status faster to try and relieve pressure on other lanes.

vs Teemo - Starting Doran's Shield is most effective against Satan due to its passive ability to block 8 damage from single target attacks and spells and the fact that Teemo doesn't have any skillshots to dodge so Boots of Speed really don't help against him. You need to be careful not to take repeated poke from Teemo, but for the most part you can heal up the damage that he does to you and you can poke back hard with Tides of Blood and Transfusion since Blinding Dart doesn't prevent you from using AoE or targeted spells. Get him low on health and call your jungler in for a gank before 6th to get you rolling as he'll have a hard time getting away. After 6 he will create a mine field around the lane that will make ganks a lot more frustrating (though not impossible).

Parting Thoughts

I think that Vlad can be a questionable pick in the sense they he offers damage and that is about it. If you or your team are behind you may want to consider investing in a Rylai's Crystal Scepter so you can at least slow champions outside of Sanguine Pool.

He has a strategic mini-game of managing his health vs his damage output which some might find fun and others tedious. And while you don't exactly have to play passively in lane, it can take some time before you have the ability to go toe to toe with you lane opponent.

But if you like biding you time and building to a peak level of power he can put out a massive amount of sustained damage assuming he has a way to get to his victims.