Before, I would never ever consider purchasing this on Vlad, because it was completely outclassed by WotA, but since WotA has been removed and Vladimir's sustain sucks now, peharps purchasing a 
may not be a bad idea? The problem is that it is a lot more expensive compared to WotA and the AD is wasted.
Also, it lacks cooldown reduction; however, I can compensate this with runes, 
, and 
Caítlyn2 votesYour best bet would be to ditch Vlad cuz hes trash and Riot doesnt care.
MilfHuntUnitXJ92 votesAre you kidding? His new E is as if his old E was fully stacked, except ALL the time and it does more damage and has more range.. The Q heal is basically the same but the third cast heals so much more and is way better..
New vlad is better than the old one without a doubt.. It's the item's that changed, but I found that 
works extremely well on vlad after you rush a Rylai's, new Vlad does excellent with movement speed.
WitchQueen Annie2 votesAre you kidding? His new E is as if his old E was fully stacked, except ALL the time .. The Q heal is basically the same but the third cast heals so much more and is way better..
New vlad is better than the old one without a doubt.. It's the item's that changed, but I found that
As a Vlad main, I disagree.
Contrary to popular belief, keeping Old Vlad's E fully stacked was very very easy and cost virtually nothing (thanks to Spell Vamp).
New E can be blocked while old one couldn't, New E is telegraphed and can be avoided while old one didn't telegraph and couldn't be avoided, New E kills Vlad himself and often does more damage to Vlad himself than to the enemy...
New E is flat out worse
MilfHuntUnitXJ93 votesYou are probably going the same build you always do. When a champion gets reworked, you should probably itemize differently and not itemize as if you still have spell vamp because it doesn't work. I am a pre-rework Vlad main as well and the fact you needed to flash it tells me you are unsure about how to play the new one.
I looked at your match history and found that you use pretty much the same 2 builds on him each game. If you deviate a little bit from it and maybe played him in different lanes I'm sure you will find your opinion change.
Besides, had you looked in the PBE, you would have recognized the fact that he's getting a pretty healthy buff next patch.
WitchQueen Annie1 votesYou are probably going the same build you always do. When a champion gets reworked, you should probably itemize differently and not itemize as if you still have spell vamp because it doesn't work. I am a pre-rework Vlad main as well and the fact you needed to flash it tells me you are unsure about how to play the new one.
I looked at your match history and found that you use pretty much the same 2 builds on him each game. If you deviate a little bit from it and maybe played him in different lanes I'm sure you will find your opinion change.
Besides, had you looked in the PBE, you would have recognized the fact that he's getting a pretty healthy buff.
I'm used to playing him full AP glass cannon.
I've been doing some experimenting and have opted to do Boots of Swiftness (I used to do Sorcerers and Ionian but the importance of MS has gone up with the new Vlad).
I tried one game where I did a Tank build after Rylais but have found that the loss of AP is too much.
Even in games where I win the lane with this full AP build and then seem to do reasonably well later on... I still feel that the new Vlad deals at 25-50% less damage on average. Mostly because you're hitting your opponents with tons of attacks that have been Nerfed.
What do you recommend building?
MilfHuntUnitXJ91 votesPersonally.. I liked to use DFT before the rework. Now, I build him full carry with all the carry masteries. This means, Double Edged Sword, Bounty Hunter, Assassin, Natural Talent, Merciless (this one is a given), Sorcery, and Precision with Thunderlords to top it off. The new E hits like a truck if you build well enough and you have enough magic pen. My runes for new Vlad are Health Seals, Armor Pen marks, AP quints, and AP Glyphs.
My typical build would be a 
or 
start, 2nd item , third item 
with my fourth being or whichever one I missed.
Usually, the game ends at around the 30 minute mark. If not, 5th would be and finally I would sell Swiftness Boots for a 
.
Typically I try to win lane early by any method.. this means taking 
and asking for your jungler to camp you. Winning lane early means you get to free farm and deny the enemy farm, shoving your powerspike to occur much earlier while making the enemy laner useless.
Also, you need to play much more aggressively. Always try to land your third Q on the enemy by timing the Q to occur right after you slow them with a fully charged E.
You can Ult while charging your E so utilize the "10% increased damage" aspect as much as possible if you can go all in.
They reworked him to supplement the removal of Spell Vamp with higher damaging abilities.. you should play as such, I find building full carry works the best on him now. However, 6% spell vamp from quints instead of flat AP could still be decent, but it gimps your AP.
Again, next patch he is getting buffs so i'll see to it that building this way will make him even stronger.
Anaithnid1 votesOld Vlad was a GOD. yes the ap stacks better now with his abilities, but only because you actually need a ton of defense now. old vlad vs new? well lets put it this way. i could solo bot with old vlad, and did so on many occasions. against vayne and their support. and still win.
Serevas1 votesHonestly I'd suggest one of the other hextech items over gunblade.
would be decent, HP and AP work well with his passive, 10% CDR, the active isn't bad either.
YumaS2Astral1 votesHonestly I'd suggest one of the other hextech items over gunblade.
The reason why I want to test Gunblade on Vlad is because of the 15% healing passive
Serevas1 votesI thought they got rid of that, my bad.
WitchQueen Annie1 votesI wouldn't recommend it. For the simple reason that as soon as it starts to work Riot will probably remove the Gunblade. Riot is dead set on making sure Spell Vamp stays dead.
Hullabaloo9071 votesI honestly think they should have just made wota have the same passive