Vladimir, The crimson Reaper and his upcoming rework
It's official, Vladimir as well as other five immobile mages are going to be reworked mid-year in a class update similar to the dreaded Juggernauts and Marksmen. While champions like Brand are going to get reworked due to not providing an unique enough experience Vladimir was chosen due to the same reason as Mordekaiser was; He's unhealthy and con't be allowed to be strong without pissing off almost every other top laner.
A good friend of mine, TheUntitledKing, who considers Vlad to be his main and myself got together and discussed the Crimson reaper in detail. While his puns are even worse than Vlad's he did manage to give me some insight into what makes Vladimir who he is and me always having considered Old Mordekaiser and Vlad to be really similar made me decide to try to express my opinion on Vlad.
So, without further ado let's get to the juicy bits.
Who is Vladimir Vladimir is a Noxian Haemomancer, a Blood Mage. On the outside he seems like the usual Aristocrat, he's lean, he dresses in extravagant clothing, he's got the pale visage so many nobles used to consider a sign of nobility. Yet beneath that facade lurks a real Monster. While not a Vampire by name Vladimir does share many attributes so commonly found in Vampire literature, tales of the handsome Aristocrats seducing humans only to feast on their blood.
Vladimir is similar to the bunch due to his fascination with the very essence of life, Blood. His lore tells of him murdering two of his play mates when he was a mere fifteen years old only to get high off the blooming crimson of their blood. He escapes Noxus only to find a desolate temple and his future Master Dimitri, a blood Mage of unfathomable power who trains the youth until in his final test Vladimir absorbs all of Dimitri's blood, gaining all the powers of every blood mage before him.
In Sion's relaunch it has been revealed that Vlad's indeed a member of the Black Rose, the shadowy organization pulling the strings in the shadows. This makes Vladimir close allies with Swain and Leblanc as well as Elise apparently, all mages of monstrous magical talents, two of them even being shape shifters who turn into daemonic animals. In Sion's rebirth Vlad was the one performing the Blood ritual to reanimate the former Noxian hero, with Jarvan's blood and four unlucky souls being drained of all their blood to give life to Sion.
These depicts Vlad capable of utilizing blood as more than a weapon but also as a means to give life to what was once dead and to sustain that life.
On a gameplay side Vladimir's a tanky mage. One who due to his low range and low cooldowns thrives in close quarters but not degrading himself to get into Melee range. He keeps his distance and yet he0s close enough to draw out your blood.
His damage output's sustained, in more ways than one. He doesn't burst, he drains you like a real Vampire as well as sustaining himself with your lifeblood. His ultimate and spammable Tides of Blood make him an AoE threat who manages to reduce clumped up enemies to puddles of blood. As a Late game monster he gets really tanky, yet his power curve doesn't match a real late game mage, but i'll get into more detail later on.
Vlad stays healthy but his playstyle isn't Vladimir SHOULD be a sustain mage, he should get tanky, he should dish out a lot of damage over time yet while this niche isn't problematic the way he achieves this is. He has the problem of having a spammable, resourceless POINT AND CLICK heal that serves as poke as. You can't poke Vladimir in lane but have to go ballistic on his pale ass in order to beat him and if you do he'll go all "NOPE" into his pool and sustain back up. His sustain doesn't require a resource, it doesn't require him to take risks and once he gets a WoTA he's even resourceless while healing even more. For a late game champion he doesn't scale as well as others, spiking at level 9 when he maxes out his Q and his ultimate damage amp being a flat 12% doesn't make it scale all that well either.
How to fix some of his issues/Suggestions Vladimir's sustain lacks his having to expend a resource or actually having to risk anything. That in mind I've come up with something inspired by his lore where he revels in the blooming rose petal-like blood of his victims. Enter "Blood Clouds" or how I'd call them; Roses of the Dusk, a nudge to his affiliation with the Black rose and him seeing Blood as something beautiful.
W; Active: Sanguine Pool Passive; Roses of the Dusk Whenever Vladimir kills a unit it leaves behind a mist of blood Vladimir can stand in to recover a flat amount of health over a few seconds. This would make vlad get into range of dying minions in order to bask in their blooming blood, recovering his health by other means than simply point and click his enemies. Yet this would only be his lane sustain, which would probably have to be balanced with reducing his massive HP regen to Morde-levels in order to make his sustain carry risks and giving his enemies the chance to shoo him away from the blood to deny him the healing.
Another suggestion is for him to use a secondary resource bar like Aatrox's, his blood ball, he has to fill to increase his healing so that he doesn't just spam his resourceless Q all day to heal himself. This bar would fill every time he expends health and increases his Q heal, whose heal value would have to become way lower. A full bar would heal him as much, if not more, than it current does but all his spells except his ultimate would require health to cast, which would make him healthier due to his Q now actually having a cost but having a higher heal to compensate since Riot's issue with Vlad's him spamming his resourceless Q 24/7..
Haemoplague doesn't feel as impactful as it should and has the potential to become a true spreading disease, similar to the plagues Vampires were rumored to bring in their wake. His ultimate could be him infecting one target enemy champion and boost his team's damage tp that particular champion, maybe even scaling with missing HP. But here's the fun part; When the infected champion DIES before the effect ends his corpse explodes in a vicious blood cloud, infecting the closest enemy champion, starting the cycle anew!
These are just my thoughts on the Crimson Reaper Vladimir, and everyone's entitled to their own opinion. This is what these kinds of threads are for anyways, to discuss and compare the different takes on a champion's identity and gameplay. With the Mage update drawing closer with each passing day we should take some time and really pin down the six to-be-reworked champions so that Riot's got a clear picture what they have to change and what has to stay so that we can avoid another Mordekaiser to be born.
~M.M
's face.
using his blood as a resource makes far too much sense for him to ever have a mana pool, but "blood" translates directly to "health" when talking about resources. again, adding a "blood" resource sounds great.
and the health cost of using his E disappears, leaving you with a free damage + healing amp. i would be incredibly sad to see his Q or W, or even his passive changed into a new, different ability entirely, and i think his E especially is a good place to implement the heavier ability changes.
spirits. Vlad is tanky and has sustain (both in the live incarnation and our theorized one) for days, he has no issues with getting into melee range unless he's against someone that no one wants to be in melee range against (
). Your comparison to Thresh passive seems off (since to us it seemed more like a modified Zac passive) and we toyed with the idea of letting him reactivate Sanguine Pool early to let him snare everyone on top of the pool, but figured that'd overload his kit.
