Riot, what exactly are you doing with Vladimir right now?

I've said it before and I'll say it till I no longer need to, I have a tremendous love of Vladimir. Vladimir is, in part, why I play League at all, but that's not why I'm making this post. I'm making this post because Vladimir is currently sitting at a 43% winrate, after a slew of nerfs, of note last patch.

As a refresher:

Base Health reduced from 550 to 525.

Crimson Rush base healing bonus reduced to 30 - 200 from 40 - 240.

Tides of Blood cost/scaling damage reduced to 8% of maximum health. Tides of Blood Cooldown increased to 13/11/9/7/5 from 9/8/7/6/5.

These, coupled with the nerfs from the patch prior:

Base Movement Speed reduced from 335 to 330.

Sanguine Pool Cooldown increased by 2 seconds at all ranks.

These are not small, ignorable changes. Now, you could argue that any Champion could feasibly sit at any winrate if their playerbase is dominated by less than adequately skilled players. I'd argue against that with a quote from a good friend of mine.

> Plebs or not, that is bad.

Yes, it is bad.

Vlad is in this position most likely because of his performance in the LCS, his claim to any fame consisting of landing his ultimate and adding a 10% damage amp to anyone caught by it.

So Riot responded by...nerfing the shit out of everything else in his kit. That is really not the way I think you should be approaching this kind of problem.

If his ult is a problem, nerf the ult. If you don't want to see him in your professional-level games, nerf the thing that's making him picked at that level: Haemoplague. Don't forget that this is the highest level of play, where teams are as coordinated as they're going to be, so a teamfight-utility ult is something you'd reasonably see at that level, rather than in soloqueue where more self-centered ults are more feasible.

Vlad as a champion is made up of being consistently middle-ground powerful, rather than moments of great heights and great lows. Vlad's QWE are infinitely more core to the Champion than his R, whereas someone like Veigar or Tryndamere's success is predicated on their ult being off cooldown for a fight. I can't be the only one who believes that, who thinks that Vlad's strength should be in his basic abilities and away from his ultimate.

So Riot, once again, what exactly are you doing with Vladimir? Is seeing him played at higher levels after he's been reworked to be healthier something you didnt want to happen? Is what you did with his MYMU update off-the-mark for what you wanted, and you'll just return him to the same, underpowered state that he was forcibly kept in pre-rework, even though the things that used to exist (like his interaction with SpellVamp and how his Q offered almost nothing in the way of opponents playing around it) no longer do?

I don't (much like anyone else) want to see my favourite Champion slashed and left to bleed out because an infinitesimally small percentage of the playerbase with the highest of coordination abilities is performing well with him, and thus ruined for the rest of the much more mediocre playerbase.

Yours Cordially, Tides of Blood