Vladimir Build Guide by DebilekLaZe

Hello! I am LaZe, I'm a diamond midlaner, I've been diamond for 2 seasons and I'm currently hovering around diamond II. Vladimir is my most played champion and I have over 450k mastery points on him, I have years of experience on the champ and I hope to share some of it with you. He is a simple champion with a lot to offer.

PROS

- Easy to pickup

- Great sustain

- Safety with sanguine pool

- 1v9 lategame

- Oneshots

CONS

- Predictable combos

- Weak early game

- Quite reliant on his summoner spells

Electrocute - This rune provides Vladimir with some great damage to trade easier in lane, great for early-mid game


Taste of blood - Great sustain, super nice if you can use your Q every time this rune comes off cooldown in lane


Eyeball collection - Helps your scaling out a lot, you can swap this rune out with either ghost poro or zombie ward depending on your preferance

Ravenous hunter - Some more sustain and heaing for you, always great for Vlad. Some players choose relentless hunter for the extra out of combat movement speed

Transcendence - Cooldown reduction, alongside ability power and movement speed is one of Vlad's most favorite stats! This rune will add a little more DPS to the burst-heavy electrocute page.

Nimbus cloak - Most of the time a must have for Vladimir. The burst of movement speed after you flash or ignite is just too good to not get.

Phase rush - Vladimir utilizes this rune super well, it helps him kite, run around the fight, get into the backline and escape

Nimbus cloak - Most of the time a must have for Vladimir. The burst of movement speed after you flash or ignite is just too good to not get.

Transcendence - Cooldown reduction, alongside ability power and movement speed is one of Vlad's favorite stats! This rune is used to give Vlad even more ability haste.

Gathering storm - Vladimir is a late game carry, so why not empower his late game further? This rune gives you SO much AP that in longer games your damage might feel illegal.

Magical footwear - +10 bonus movement speed on your boots! Why would you not take this.


Cosmic insight - Some more cooldown reduction both on your abilities AND on your summoner spells

(P) Crimson pact

Every 40 bonus health Vladimir gains 1 ability power and every 1 ability power Vladimir gains 1.4 bonus health.

This ability is what makes Vladimir so damn tanky sometimes. It also provides Vlad with some nice AP! Please, do not itemize around this, Rylai's Crystal Scepter is not a good item on Vladimir nowadays.

(Q) Transfusion

Vladimir deals damage to the enemy and heals. When Vladimir's resource bar fills up, he gains movement speed for a short duration and his Transfusion deals a lot more damage and heals a lot more.

Vladimir drains blood from the target enemy, dealing them magic damage and healing himself.

Once Vladimir fills up his resource bar, he enters Crimson rush.

Crimson rush

Vladimir gains 10% bonus movement speed for 0.5 seconds and his next Transfusion will deal 85% increased damage and will heal 30-200 more health. This heal is 35% weaker against minions.

Transfusion is Vladimir's bread and butter ability, it's what makes his laning phase so forgivable, you can take bad trades and still benefit from them in some matchups because of that amazing sustain you have from this ability.

(W) Sanguine pool

Vladimir turns into a pool of blood for 2 seconds, gaining 37.5% bonus decaying movement speed and becoming untargetable, Vladimir can also pass through units during Sanguine Pool.

Enemies inside of Sanguine Pool will suffer a 40% slow and will be dealt magic damage every 0.5 seconds. Vladimir heals himself for 15% of damage caused by Sanguine Pool.

This ability makes Vladimir very slippery and gives him a nice escape. While you cannot cast abilities or auto attack while in Sanguine Pool, you can cast your Tides of Blood before Sanguine Pool for a more effective usage of pool.

(E) Tides of blood

Vladimir channels for up to 1.5 seconds, slowing himself for 20% after channeling for longer than 1 second. Vladimir can recast this ability anytime he chooses, if he doesn't, Tides of Blood will cast on it's own.

Recasting this ability causes Vladimir to unleash a nova of blood around himself. Hitting anyone with this ability will deal magic damage based on how long Vladimir has channeled the ability for. Tides of Blood will slow enemies after it has been channeled for 1 second or longer.

This ability costs Vladimir a %percentage of his health.

Tides of Blood provides Vladimir with great waveclear and AOE damage. Casting any ability during Tides of Blood will cause the casted ability to cast and Tides of Blood to pop soon after. This ability reaches max damage after 1 second of channeling.

(R) Hemoplague

Vladimir spreads a large virulent plague in a large area, infecting all enemies within the area of the ability's cast for 4 seconds. This plague will increase the damage dealt to infected enemies by all sources by 10% for the duration.

After the duration, the infection bursts, dealing magic damage to all infected enemies and healing Vladimir.

Hemoplague perfectly finishes off Vladimir's kit. It grants him sustain in fights and gives him huge wombo combo potential with the large AOE

START ITEM

Dark seal - Severely underrated, incredibly gold efficient even without stacks + builds into mejai's

MYTHIC ITEM

Hextech rocketbelt - My favourite, and in my opinion, the best mythic for Vladimir, Magic pen, health, AP, Ability haste and a great active to help you with your engage

Night harvester - The second mythic item option for Vladimir, I recommend to only buy this if you have ghost, in my opinion it isn't worth to go for now that rocketbelt has magic pen

BOOTS

Sorcerer's shoes - Magic pen is just too good on Vladimir, combine these boots with void staff and your damage could pierce through the thickest metal there is

Ionian boots of lucidity - In my opinion, you never need this much ability haste, I never take these

DEFENSIVE ITEMS

Zhonya's hourglass - Great item, gives you an extra combo in a teamfight and can make you invincible when you're waiting for your R heal

Banshee's veil - The magic resistance alternative to Zhonya's, not as good but still a good magic resistance item

Spirit visage - This item is both underrated and overrated. Only buy it against very heavy AP teamcomps, it will make you nearly immortal.

LEGENDARY ITEMS

Rabadon's deathcap - Very good item for Vlad, it makes him surprisingly tanky and gives him a ton of damage, buy this before void staff if the enemy isn't building any magic resistance

Void staff - Amazing item, buy it second/third if you see the enemy build ANY magic resist, if they don't buy it later, it will give you literal true damage with sorc shoes if the enemy doesn't have any magic resist

Cosmic drive - Big source of ability haste and movement speed, great for both of the runepages, usually buy this second with phase rush

Mejai's soulstealer - This is the most broken item in the game if you're decent at surviving, gives you 10% movement speed after you reach 10 stacks and a ton of AP, it will also teach you to play safe. Squeeze it into your build anywhere

Morellonomicon - I rarely buy it, I usually ask my team to build heal reduction but if you really need it, go for it

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Let's get this out of the way, Vladimir is not a good early game champion. Even with Electrocute he is a pretty weak early game champ. Early trades are gonna be tough most of the time so you either need to be picky with your trades or avoid them at all and try to catch as much cs as possible.

TRADING

Short trades are your go-to in most matchups. Cast your Transfusion on the enemy when you see an opportunity, those opportunities could be an Anivia wasting her Flash Frost or simply the opponent last hitting a minion. Your Transfusion is the bread and butter of trading with Vlad, utilize your Crimson Rush to pressure the enemy with the big amount of damage. Trading with melee champions is a bit easier, usually you can weave in a lot more auto attacks and when they jump on you just use your W or E-W.

FARMING

You're gonna have to be a really good farmer if you want to play Vladimir, don't pressure yourself for 10cs/min every game, some matchups will be hard enough for you to not get past 5cs/min in the early game. Try your best to catch every minion you can without taking too much damage, have some respect, back off if the enemy can punish you for the last hit. Something Elite500 does is this - Head into practice tool with your standard Vlad runes and start farming midlane for a couple waves, whenever you feel like it, you can restart the game and shoot for a higher score of cs this time. This is a great warmup that I would recommend to anyone who wants to improve at csing.

Once Transfusion has reached level 9 and you have a Blasting Wand is when Vladimir reaches his first powerspike and sets one foot into the mid game! At this point you should be feeling a bit stronger and can outsustain a lot more of the enemy damage with your low cooldown Transfusion and newly acquired AP.

TRADING

Now, once you're slowly getting into mid game, you can be a lot more confident with your trades. If you see an opportunity, use your Tides of Blood and Transfusion for a great damage combo and sustain back from the trade with your Transfusion used on the minions.

MAXIMIZING INCOME

Let's face it, we're playing soloQ, if you want your gold income maximized, you're gonna have to take some of your jungler's camps on your way to a sidelane. Gromp , Murk wolf , Crimson raptor and Krug camps are all great for expanding your gold lead! Don't just take all your jungler's jungle camps though, you can take the enemy jungle camps and deny them xp and gold by doing so. I recommend you to farm on the sidelanes as Vladimir if you have Teleport, simply push out a sidelane as far as you feel safe and when you see a teamfight occur, simply tp on a nearby ward/minion.

Late game is reached once you have about 5-6 items. This is when Vladimir is at his strongest, this is literally why you pick Vladimir. Scaling into the late game where you can often 1v5 teamfights.

WHY IS VLAD'S TEAMFIGHTING SO GOOD?

Vladimir's teamfighting is really strong simply because of his massive AOE damage, his amazing get out of jail free card Sanguine Pool and his movement speed, I mean seriously, you're literally gonna be running through the enemy team killing everybody if you're ahead in the late game. Vlad's teamfighting feels WAY too good, especially with added movement speed from Ghost or a speedy support like Zilean or Lulu.

HOW TO TEAMFIGHT

Wait for your team to engage or do it yourself when you see an opportunity, once you're close to the enemy team, look for their carries! Whoever is the strongest and is squishy, try to oneshot them. Also, look for big ultimates. It's super common, especially in lower elo brackets, that enemies are gonna be clumped up, waiting for you to Hemoplague them, once you use your ult, Q anyone, preferably a squishy carry and then immediately E-W and pop the E on everyone. Another way of teamfighting is flanking, this works especially well if your team is behind and the enemy is cocky enough to not expect a flank from you. Flanking can be an amazing way of teamfighting if your team doesn't have any engage so you just invade their backline and pop their carries.

If you need to sustain but can't walk up to Q minions, ward your raptors and Q the largest raptor, this helps a TON with harder matchups and I can't recommend it enough, if your raptors aren't up, walk all the way to the wolves and Q those.

You can extend the duration of Crimson rush by using your Tides of Blood, Sanguine Pool or Zhonya's Hourglass. Use this to make your crimson rush less visible by doing this at the near end of crimson rush.

Use your Sanguine Pool effectively! This is important, use it to dodge abilities, avoid sticky situations, escape, slow the enemy and make sure to cast Tides of Blood before it.

Using Hemoplague on the wave when you need to shove a wave quickly is worth it, don't be afraid to do so!

Set your E to standard cast so you don't need to hold E while comboing, can make things a lot easier.

You can proc phase rush by literally anything - Pool, tapping E, Hextech Rocketbelt, Hemoplague initial cast and even random stuff like Randuin's Omen.

(Any skillshot can be pooled)
{Auto attacks will usually go through pool}


LeBlanc E, Zoe E, Karma W, Morgana R, Aatrox W, Kled Q, Nocturne E, Varus R - If you pool AFTER the initial cast of these abilities and don't manage to get out of the area you're gonna get CC'd.

Zed - You can make Zed's ultimate disappear by pooling when he is in his untargetable stance.

Tristana - You can pool her ultimate, her E bomb will still pop while you are in pool.

Twisted Fate - Gold card can easily be pooled.

Urgot - He cannot pull you in with his R as long as you are in pool, extend this duration with Zhonya's Hourglass and he can't pull you at all.

Vi - You can cancel her R with pool.

Caitlyn - Her ult can be pooled.

Sylas - Surprisingly, you can pool Sylas' W. Doing so will put it on cooldown, it's just hard to time.

This is the end on my Vladimir guide. Thank you for reading through it! While it may feel like a flawed one, I'm trying my best to keep it updated and improving.