Vlad's new Tides of Blood (E) goes against his own Ultimate and subclass.

So, at first was hyped about the Vlad rework. Saw his new E and thought, "eh, I'll try it on the PBE before I get upset." So after trying on the PBE I was just confused.

Why would a champion have an ultimate made for and his team to pump out as much damage as possible have an ability that interrupts his own combo, slows him and take half of his window to dish out damage to fully activate.

This is a horrible design flaw, it'd be like if Zed had to channel his E and the channeled does all the things listed above. It slows, interrupted by other abilities and takes up a 1 second to cast, meaning your ultimate is unintentionally nerfed because of the even shorter window you have to push out your damage. To add on to all of that it can be interrupted, which is even worse because he's a poster child of the Battlemages.

Battle Mages get into the middle of the fray, seeking to wreak havoc upon the entire enemy team with their overwhelming sustained area damage. Due to their relatively short (but not melee) combat ranges and the need to burn down their opponents over time, Battle Mages have significant defensive capabilities that range from sustaining endlessly to literally defying death for a short period of time.

These are Riots words on battlesmages and another stack to add onto this mess his that his E can now be body blocked, even by minions. So if a wave just so happens to walk up and vlad engages the teamfight (somehow) the entire minion wave could block his burst, along with the enemy frontline. What's the point of having AOE if it can be blocked? No one throws a grenade to kill the guys in front, they grow grenades to destroy everything within that area. If Jeff is standing behind Mike when it blows, he's not going to walk it off, he's going to be giblets just like his friend.

The easy solution is allow Vlad to channel his E while casting other abilities. This would increase his combo potential, allowing him to to erupt from his pool with the ability already preped. It'd allow him to dodge interrupts while still being able to get into the middle of the enemy team, of course at the cost of a huge chunk of his health since both abilities already do double digit percentages of his health current health to be cast. Now I totally understand him not being able to Q while in his pool because he'd basically just be healing after being untargetable which sounds...crazy without some obvious downside.

Also remove the slow and ability to be blocked. Again there is no reason for an AOE champion designed to stay in fights to slow himself and have his area of effect ability to be blocked. The channel does allow for a way to counter his attack since the previous tides was just, clear wave get free damage because it was impossible to judge the range.

Edit: Just had a thought about his Q getting a MS boost. It could be the compensate for the slow on his E but if they slow didn't exist the Q ms wouldn't need to either. they're both equally irrelevant.