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Try this on Vlad.

WoonStruck··2 votes·585 views

Move the heal ratio to scale on W rank, remove the flat heal. Boom. Laning against him isn't a struggle anymore. Yes, he'd have 1 point in it early, but how much will 5% AP really heal him early game? You could easily nerf his HP5 if you really think that sustain would be a problem.

Add a decaying MS buff (scaling with rank) to the Q particle to mitigate his spammed animation delays, boom, he can actually move around fights more effectively now, allowing him to function in team-fights better.

All that's left now is making E less reliable in a way that makes it effectively function the same, such as instead of stacking buff on Vlad, it stacks debuffs on enemies. This could allow him to benefit teammates as well for sustain, or simply allow Vlad to sustain more off of targets with stacks. While the first sounds cool (and broken) , the second is more likely, and introduces a power ramp in fights since it would likely stack past 4, since he can't constantly keep them up like currently. This is what his E was originally supposed to function as. A ramping damage threat in fights.

Ult probably needs to be re-done to allow Vlad more personal power in his kit, but if the kit stays similar to what it is now with the update, the current ult doesn't take away from what he's able to do too much.

This accomplishes all of the goals Riot set out to do, with the exception that I believe the reliability is probably too high in their eyes. Another option is making a mini-TF Q with a narrower cone for Vlad's E. Essentially hits everything in front of where you aim, rather than all-around you. Another option is similar to Skarner's E mechanics (minus slow/stun), but without the projectile slow-down per target hit. Think spattering, volatile blood.

Something else that would be cool is W AoE radius scaling with current HP. This would give you a reason to use it at full hp every so often. This could also scale with bonus+current HP, similar to Zac's hidden passive.

With these changes, I believe everyone would enjoy playing and playing against Vlad more, as well as avoid any backlash from avid Vlad players.

20 Comments

1st Movement2 votes

I agree on the speed buff like ahri on vlad
Then I can actually lane against a high Elo riven

Like literally I have to play passive till I get my items or ask jungler to gank before I can fight riven.

WoonStruck1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Reaver MHX,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=EfMrXA3V,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2016-01-27T20:36:11.145+0000)

I agree on the speed buff like ahri on vlad
Then I can actually lane against a high Elo riven

Like literally I have to play passive till I get my items or ask jungler to gank before I can fight riven.

Riven's actually an easy match-up, imo. Most are very easy to bait into wasting E, at which point you can harass safely, or bait into pushing, at which point you can farm easily. As long as you start boots/pots, she can't touch you unless you over-extend. She'll miss W just barely after EQQ.

1st Movement1 votes

{quoted}

Riven's actually an easy match-up, imo. Most are very easy to bait into wasting E, at which point you can harass safely, or bait into pushing, at which point you can farm easily. As long as you start boots/pots, she can't touch you unless you over-extend. She'll miss W just barely after EQQ.

Not with the Rivens I fought against they would literally flash on you as soon as they have an level advantage and all in . I can deal with some Rivens but usually I still end up win in after losing laning phase. I like rumble vs riven match ups more easy

WoonStruck1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Reaver MHX,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=EfMrXA3V,comment-id=000000000000,timestamp=2016-01-27T20:48:40.943+0000)

Not with the Rivens I fought against they would literally flash on you as soon as they have an level advantage and all in . I can deal with some Rivens but usually I still end up win in after losing laning phase. I like rumble vs riven match ups more easy

All you need to do is expect the early aggression and not let them do it. Let her push and just soak the exp. You're going to start behind, but that's pretty much always the case. She can't dive you without dying herself, and she's an easy gank if she's being aggressive anyway.

1st Movement1 votes

{quoted}

All you need to do is expect the early aggression and not let them do it. Let her push and just soak the exp. You're going to start behind, but that's pretty much always the case. She can't dive you without dying herself, and she's an easy gank if she's being aggressive anyway.

I tend to start with an ampt time 50-50 to get it snowballing lol I guess I should go with the safer boots and Doran shield lol.

WoonStruck1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Reaver MHX,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=EfMrXA3V,comment-id=00000000000000000000,timestamp=2016-01-27T21:09:55.656+0000)

I tend to start with an ampt time 50-50 to get it snowballing lol I guess I should go with the safer boots and Doran shield lol.

You don't need the Doran's Shield unless she starts stacking Doran's Blades. You should be fine with boots->revolver and just don't let her engage on you. By the time you have WotA+CDR boots, you can harass her effectively enough to dissuade her future aggression.

For the most part, you can't buy enough defense to stop Riven from killing you. You have to know how to avoid her engages, or at least make them sub-optimal enough that she can't just kill you with R re-cast after you dis-engage. Sustain up after and she's no longer a threat for a minute and a half.

Also, try to have a 20% scaling CDR page for Vlad. Blues and a Quint. If you go 9 blues and 3 quints for 30%, you can give up CDR boots for item 3009, which replaces the MS quints you should have been using quite nicely.

1st Movement1 votes

{quoted}

You don't need the Doran's Shield unless she starts stacking Doran's Blades. You should be fine with boots->revolver and just don't let her engage on you. By the time you have WotA+CDR boots, you can harass her effectively enough to dissuade her future aggression.

For the most part, you can't buy enough defense to stop Riven from killing you. You have to know how to avoid her engages, or at least make them sub-optimal enough that she can't just kill you with R re-cast after you dis-engage. Sustain up after and she's no longer a threat for a minute and a half.

Also, try to have a 20% scaling CDR page for Vlad. Blues and a Quint. If you go 9 blues and 3 quints for 30%, you can give up CDR boots for item 3009, which replaces the MS quints you should have been using quite nicely.

acutally what have I been smoking I should go with the standard ryze build with ms quint just like u said

Ty for the advice man

Lol I like facing renektons so I can easily dodge their stun with w

What's more intriguing is that if you correctly use w and Darius tries to ult u it'll dodge his ult and make it go on cd

Nahui1 votes

So Vlad will have to rank W to sustain, but deal no damage to sustain with. Seems legit.

WoonStruck3 votes

[{quoted}](name=Captain Rand0,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=EfMrXA3V,comment-id=0001,timestamp=2016-01-27T20:36:14.582+0000)

So Vlad will have to rank W to sustain, but deal no damage to sustain with. Seems legit.

You buy WotA before Vlad has any significant sustain. Contrary to belief, Vlad's sustain early is terrible, even with rank 5 Q. All of the sustain you have comes from WotA until you have over 300 AP. Then its the heal ratio. You'd have to choose between maxing W or E second; safety/sustain or damage/waveclear. Seems like a good set of comparable decisions to me.

The intent of the rework is to remove his early sustain from laning for the most part. This effectively accomplishes that without setting back his late game sustain, which would still be 5/10/15/20/25% AP. They'd probably buff it to 6/12/18/24/30% though, to compensate the flat heal. 55 +25% AP doesn't do much for you early, but its enough to make some match-ups hell, especially once you start getting AP.

Nahui1 votes

{quoted}

You buy WotA before Vlad has any significant sustain. Contrary to belief, Vlad's sustain early is terrible, even with rank 5 Q. All of the sustain you have comes from WotA until you have over 300 AP. Then its the heal ratio. You'd have to choose between maxing W or E second; safety/sustain or damage/waveclear. Seems like a good set of comparable decisions to me.

The a large purpose of the rework is to remove his early sustain from laning. This effectively accomplishes that without setting back his late game sustain, which would still be 5/10/15/20/25% AP. They'd probably buff it to 6/12/18/24/30% though, to compensate the flat heal. 55 +25% AP doesn't do much for you early, but its enough to make some match-ups hell, especially once you start getting AP.

However you can't win off of pure sustain. His Q doesn't do enough without E to kill anyone. Max Q and W and you'll be tickling and sustaining, so essentially dying, or doing a bit more damage but getting nothing back, so dying. It's wouldn't work on him. Even shifting his sustain ratio or whatever you were talking about to his E would be better since that would be a second rank anyways so it would still achieve lowering earlier oppression. But you can't take the strength of someone's kit and put in on an inferior ability. Imagine if the range that you could throw a shadow on zed was based on W rank. Zed would be forced to sacrifice all his damage to be able to...do the damage he is intended to do. It's the same concept. Q is a light nuke with sustain attached to it. E is a massive wave clear that can be primed to do more damage, but visibly so by the enemy team so time is the balance there. W can save Vlad but at a cost of 1/5 of his health. It really is balanced, the best they would do besides a full overhaul is lower the healing Q gives back or increase its cool down and shift focus to Vlad's E.

WoonStruck1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Captain Rand0,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=EfMrXA3V,comment-id=000100000000,timestamp=2016-01-27T20:50:47.532+0000)

However you can't win off of pure sustain. His Q doesn't do enough without E to kill anyone. Max Q and W and you'll be tickling and sustaining, so essentially dying, or doing a bit more damage but getting nothing back, so dying. It's wouldn't work on him. Even shifting his sustain ratio or whatever you were talking about to his E would be better since that would be a second rank anyways so it would still achieve lowering earlier oppression. But you can't take the strength of someone's kit and put in on an inferior ability. Imagine if the range that you could throw a shadow on zed was based on W rank. Zed would be forced to sacrifice all his damage to be able to...do the damage he is intended to do. It's the same concept. Q is a light nuke with sustain attached to it. E is a massive wave clear that can be primed to do more damage, but visibly so by the enemy team so time is the balance there. W can save Vlad but at a cost of 1/5 of his health. It really is balanced, the best they would do besides a full overhaul is lower the healing Q gives back or increase its cool down and shift focus to Vlad's E.

Exactly my point. Vlads would still max Q, E, then W. He would function exactly the same as now, except he'd get a MS buff from Q and wouldn't have the flat heal anymore, just the ratio. Nobody said you had to max W second.

The large part of my reasoning for moving the heal ratio to W for Q to heal off of is to delay his AP-based sustain until he actually makes use of it with high AP late game. Early-mid all its doing is pushing his WotA sustain even higher, making some match-ups hell for people. All these changes do is remove sustain until he gets WotA, and prevents his sustain from getting too strong until later on in the game.

In lane I don't even use E with the exception of 0 stack e under tower so it just takes 1 auto attack to kill minions. I wait until I have revolver to use E as harass, otherwise you kill yourself anyway, even with the current early game healing.

And your Zed example doesn't apply. Vlad's sustain from the inherent Q heal doesn't do much for him. If you've played Vlad into any hard match-ups, you'd realize this. It does hardly anything for keeping you in lane against heavy harass. Its Revolver that gives you significant sustain, then WotA, then way later in the game when you have over 300 AP.

Q's heal is not his strength early game. He doesn't have a strength early game outside of being ranged. He gets to use it every 10 seconds lvl 1. Less than 2HP/second. That 55 healing is effectively 12 HP/sec at rank 5. That sounds like a strength to you? The AP ratio doesn't kick in until way later in the game when you have AP behind it. You could even attach it to his ult and buff it to 10/20/30% AP. This would give him nearly his current sustain at level 11, and more later on.

You don't really make use of the AP ratio before 20 minutes. Most of your sustain seriously comes from WotA until later on.

Nahui1 votes

{quoted}

Exactly my point. Vlads would still max Q, E, then W. He would function exactly the same as now, except he'd get a MS buff from Q and wouldn't have the flat heal anymore, just the ratio. Nobody said you had to max W second.

The large part of my reasoning for moving the heal ratio to W for Q to heal off of is to delay his AP-based sustain until he actually makes use of it with high AP late game. Early-mid all its doing is pushing his WotA sustain even higher, making some match-ups hell for people. All these changes do is remove sustain until he gets WotA, and prevents his sustain from getting too strong until later on in the game.

In lane I don't even use E with the exception of 0 stack e under tower so it just takes 1 auto attack to kill minions. I wait until I have revolver to use E as harass, otherwise you kill yourself anyway, even with the current early game healing.

And your Zed example doesn't apply. Vlad's sustain from the inherent Q heal doesn't do much for him. If you've played Vlad into any hard match-ups, you'd realize this. It does hardly anything for keeping you in lane against heavy harass. Its Revolver that gives you significant sustain, then WotA, then way later in the game when you have over 300 AP.

Q's heal is not his strength early game. He doesn't have a strength early game outside of being ranged. He gets to use it every 10 seconds lvl 1. Less than 2HP/second. That 55 healing is effectively 12 HP/sec at rank 5. That sounds like a strength to you? The AP ratio doesn't kick in until way later in the game when you have AP behind it. You could even attach it to his ult and buff it to 10/20/30% AP. This would give him nearly his current sustain at level 11, and more later on.

You don't really make use of the AP ratio before 20 minutes. Most of your sustain seriously comes from WotA until later on.

Early game the base heal is still important. When health values are low, that base matters quite a bit. It's actually late game, maxing Q in your case, that having the higher base heal is actually not as worthwhile. What you'd have early game is a sustain mage with almost no sustain but some more mobility. That wasn't how Vlad was designed to be. He's a character who only works through sheer sustain, otherwise he will simply be an inferior Ahri. I like your idea that Vlad's early game needs to be worked on, however moving his sustain like that doesn't seem logical considering WotA doesn't just appear easily, it's still a hefty gold investment and doesn't ever auto win him the lane anyways.

WoonStruck1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Captain Rand0,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=EfMrXA3V,comment-id=00010000000000000000,timestamp=2016-01-27T22:22:33.979+0000)

Early game the base heal is still important. When health values are low, that base matters quite a bit. It's actually late game, maxing Q in your case, that having the higher base heal is actually not as worthwhile. What you'd have early game is a sustain mage with almost no sustain but some more mobility. That wasn't how Vlad was designed to be. He's a character who only works through sheer sustain, otherwise he will simply be an inferior Ahri. I like your idea that Vlad's early game needs to be worked on, however moving his sustain like that doesn't seem logical considering WotA doesn't just appear easily, it's still a hefty gold investment and doesn't ever auto win him the lane anyways.

WotA/revolver have never won you the lane unless you're playing an extremely favorable match-up. It makes it so they can't stop you from farming. That's it. That's all sustain has ever done for him. The only times I've ever noticed sustain being the main contributing factor to me winning anything is if I'm EXTREMELY fed and get caught in a very bad position.

Early game the base heal does very little. You're ranged, you have W. You should sacrifice safety somewhere, and that comes with not healing solely via Q ranks early game. Mid-late game you'd have the same if not slightly more with what I suggest. How does that make him an inferior Ahri?

Vlad was never, EVER picked for his early game. He was picked for his scaling. He needs the MS to let him function better in teamfights, where his cast delays severely hinder him. He needs it to function better because of his spammed animations. Ahri doesn't need the MS at all. Its a bonus they gave her that plays to her strengths: mobility. What game have you been playing? They aren't even remotely similar. I mean unless you're saying Yi is basically an inferior Irelia after his rework. Y'know, with the true damage and all.

The fact that Vlad almost needs MS quints to teamfight decently should tell you exactly what I'm saying again.

Korillo1 votes

Don't touch vlad plz

WoonStruck1 votes

{quoted}

Don't touch vlad plz

They're touching him. Its unavoidable.

Korillo1 votes

{quoted}

They're touching him. Its unavoidable.

They haven't done anything yet lmao - it's still avoidable

WoonStruck1 votes

{quoted}

They haven't done anything yet lmao - it's still avoidable

They're changing him with the mage update. Unless they take an approach similar to mine, its likely the changes will be drastic.

They probably won't take an approach similar to mine, which is why people need to get on board with a way they're okay with Vlad giving up reliability/early sustain without substantial changes to him that will essentially make him a different champions, Karma-style.

So no, its not still avoidable.

Korillo1 votes

{quoted}

They're changing him with the mage update. Unless they take an approach similar to mine, its likely the changes will be drastic.

They probably won't take an approach similar to mine, which is why people need to get on board with a way they're okay with Vlad giving up reliability/early sustain without substantial changes to him that will essentially make him a different champions, Karma-style.

So no, its not still avoidable.

We don't really have a choice to get on board with w/e they do. Hopefully they do not go your route.

I would prefer they do nothing or as close to nothing, but we have very little voice as to what they do with Vlad. They wouldn't have put him in the update if they hadn't already had a very good idea as to what they were going to do.

WoonStruck1 votes

{quoted}

We don't really have a choice to get on board with w/e they do. Hopefully they do not go your route.

I would prefer they do nothing or as close to nothing, but we have very little voice as to what they do with Vlad. They wouldn't have put him in the update if they hadn't already had a very good idea as to what they were going to do.

They are going to make significant changes to at least his Q and E.

His passive, W, and ult are likely to remain similar, but its possible they change those as well.

The changes I suggest keep Vlad effectively the same, but with more power in longer fights, less up-front. And this is with accomplishing everything Riot said they wanted to do to Vlad with the update.

Good luck getting anything close to the current Vlad without what I suggested.

599GTOxx1 votes

Nah, tying it to R would be MUUUCCCCHHH better. Unless they amp up his damage.

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