Vladimir and the Current Meta: Bad or Nah?

Vladimir has been a champion I've always had a thing for. I might not play him much any more but I have been thinking about trying to play him much more when I can in ranked because I seem to do really well most of the time (sitting at gold 3 currently so I'm not by any means a super good player). I was originally put off from playing him back when the original nerfs to revolver and WOTA (the change to unique) and several nerfs to him directly, but I've begun playing him again, and I am really enjoying it almost as much as I did back in season 2 (i think it was, not entirely sure).

It seems to me that Vlad is in a pretty decent place if we ignore all outside influences. His pretty awkward/bad pre-level 9 status, decent mid-game followed by an amazing late game as he starts finish out his items. I'm just not sure how he stacks up once you start adding in popular picks in actual games.

From what I have personally seen in silver/gold out of the few games I've played in ranked (plus the times I play him in norms which is far more, i dont really like ranked), he has quite a few neutral to positive match ups, and a couple that I've just been wrecked when facing.

For match ups I've found kind of difficult for Vlad (again it might just be "gold players lol") to go against people like Swain and Irelia, while having a somewhat easy time against champions like Shen, Rumble, Darius, and Renekton. It seems Vlad's big weaknesses are not being able to do much at early levels and being weak to ganks against champions with quick/multiple gap closers, as well as being equally/out sustained by certain other farm dependent champions.

In the current meta, how do you feel about him? Do you think its worth trying to play him to climb the ladder? Or are his weaknesses too high even considering his late game/are there champs who do it better?