Pros

+ Snowballs very hard + Easy wave clearing mid and late game + High damage in team fights late game (3/4 of his abilities are AoE) + Very fun to play and master + Has a lot of sustain especially after getting revolver

Cons

+ High cooldowns early + Low damage early + Very squishy early + Short range spells + Immobile + Hard to cs with early + High skill cap Sanguine Pool timing and positioning + If you fall behind in lane, it's very hard to comeback

Any sort of HP shredding items will wreck you, since you will have lots of hp, but not much resistances. These items incluse the following..


Any item or spell that applies grievous wounds such as the following..


Any spells that sustain better than Vladimir's spells such as the following..


Any hard CC spells like knock ups or roots or suppression like the following
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Lastly, QSS counters you because it removes your Hemoplague from whomever uses QSS

Lolskill Vladimir Builds

This is a website that can be used to look up the best players in the world with certain champions and look up anything from their runes to their masteries

Probuilds is another website that allows you to see high elo vlad builds

This is for when you're against an AP laner like Kennen, Teemo, Cassiopeia,etc.. You need MR to survive early and the health/lvl helps you scale into the late game with your passive you can even sub the yellows for flat health if you wanted a stronger early game.
This is a really risky, but highly scaling dependent rune page that allows you to have quite a bit more AP and HP late game. However, I don't recommend this page vs Riven, Darius, Teemo or anything that is too abusive in lane, as you will just straight up lose lane most likely. If you can get away with it when vs a Singed, Shen, Malphite or any other lanes you counter, then take advantage of it and use a scaling rune page.
This is a really good rune page to run, that I've seen high elo korean challengers use. The logic behind it is that your early AP on your rune page is a small amount and most of your AP comes from items anyways, so why not give Vladimir the immobile mage some good scaling mobility through Greater Quintessence of Movement Speed? It's a great rune page, but you will lack early damage, and the Greater Glyph of Scaling Cooldown Reduction help you spam your spells every 2.5-3 seconds late game. Take this page when you know you can get away with it, like when you're vs a Singed, Shen, Malphite or any other lane you counter.
This is yet another kind of greedy rune page that lacks defenses, but! If you can get away with it when vs a Singed, Shen, Malphite or any other lanes you counter, then take advantage of it and use a scaling rune page.

Try your best not to die early on especially to cheesy highly snowball champions like Rengar, Renekton, Riven, Pantheon, Tryndamere because as the game goes on, you get very strong. Vladimir starts ramping up around the time you get Will of the Ancients and Ionian Boots of Lucidity and hits lvl 7-9. This is the point where Vladimir is no longer as weak, as long as you have survived the early laning phase. Early on you will want to last hit as many creeps as possible with your AAs, not with your Transfusion. Your Transfusion is your main trading and harassing ability in lane and if you waste it on a creep that you could have AAed for last hit, you will be punished heavily for it. A good sustain technique for difficult lanes when you already have Hextech Revolver, is to walk over to topside golems or gromp and Tides of Blood- Transfusion them to spellvamp at least 2 rotations of your combo. This will allow you to sustain on neutral monsters without risking yourself in lane, while the enemy laner is pushing the lane towards you. The most important thing for Vladimir early on is your exp. You MUST stay at least even in xp in lane or else you will lose the lane, you can worry about more gold income later on, if you can split push. REMEMBER! Your main goal in lane is TO SURVIVE and SCALE TO LATE GAME. If you're unsure how to play a lane or feel that it's risky to trade/harass with your lane opponent, then don't, just farm as safely as you can. You DO NOT FALL OFF like other early game cheesy champions even if they get 1 or 2 kills in lane on you, you will OUTSCALE them. Your Hemoplague will always be useful in teamfights even with only its base damage, so if you're behind, remember to group for teamfighting.

It is very important that early on you DO NOT spam Tides of Blood or Transfusion onto minion waves because it will mess up your ability to last hit all of the minions. Only use Tides of Blood when you need to! Same with Transfusion.

Vladimir is a beast in teamfight. Usually people say he's only strong late game, but this isn't true, if you got an early lead because your Hemoplague combined with Rylai's Crystal Scepter will be devastating to enemies that are weaker than you. You can be a really scary teamfighting threat even in the mid game, if you're dominating your laner. Your job is to ult as many people as possible, preferably squishies, like the adc, mid, or support, so that your team and you can do as much damage as possible to them with your Hemoplague and if their team is focusing you in fights, which they probably will, remember to buy a Zhonya's Hourglass as a primary defense. Zhonya's Hourglass will allow you to easily get 2 of your full Tides of Blood- Transfusion combos along with your Hemoplague and Sanguine Pool to deal a heap ton of damage to the enemies.

Your best friend when split pushing is going to be because of the slow passive and high damage and hp it provides you. The slow passive will allow you to chase and kite multiple enemies at a time and snowball extremely hard onto single targets i.e. your lane opponent. Splitpushing should only been done when you are ahead or even with your lane opponent because this usually means you can 1v1 your lane opponent or anyone that comes to stop you since Vladimir's scaling is insane. Easy lanes that you should always split push vs are Malphite, Shen, Nasus, Singed, Gnar, and any lane that you get ahead of early on. Splitpushing is a very good strategy to draw pressure to your lane and relieve pressure from other parts of the map, so that it makes the game easier for your teammates to thrive. We all know how devastating it can be when you have a Vayne ADC that is getting camped by the jungler, so instead as Vladimir you want to draw as much pressure top lane as possible, to allow other lanes to farm, take towers, and take dragons, and allow them to not get ganked as much.

Your Sanguine Pool and Zhonya's Hourglass allow you to dodge almost all crowd control and damage abilities, so be sure to anticipate things like Crowstorm and Unstoppable Force so that you can dodge them with your untargetables as you will have 2 untargetables if you bought a Zhonya's Hourglass

Trade off your Ionian Boots of Lucidity for some Sorcerer's Shoes to maximize your magic penetration and damage output late game. You can even trade off Will of the Ancients for a Luden's Tempest or more damage items like Liandry's Torment. It all comes down to what you think will be most effective in team fights late game.

If you see a good opportunity to give you team a +1 man advantage in a fight, Teleport in because you are most effective when in teamfights. If your enemy laner starts tping bot lane early on, you must follow their Teleport, especially after level 6 so that you can help your team because you are so strong in teamfights. Vladimir has the ability to carry fights as long as you fully charge your Tides of Blood to 4 stacks and use Hemoplague on multiple people.

After you have sustain items, like Hextech Revolver and Will of the Ancients, you should start spamming your Tides of Blood so that you can have it at max stacks (4) at all times. Having this fully charged will allow you to have the most spellvamp and damage possible on Vladimir and you should always have it fully stacked in teamfights. ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS charge your Tides of Blood before teamfighting.

Hope this helps you a bit and hope you enjoyed the guide! :) Leave Feedback if possible.