Vlad, the AP mage with assassin level burst who builds semi-defensively.

Yeah, that just about sums him up. Lots of burst, built in escape (kinda), healing, pretty good back line access. Sounds like your usually burst mage/assassin. But he builds minimal to no AP heavy items, and prioritizes defensive and utility passive and active items.

In no way is Vlad super weak or broken. But he is leaning a little bit to close to the OP side of the balance spectrum. Like on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being today's Yasuo video, balanced being between 4-7, and 1 being Lee Sin if he had to be played with no visuals (since he is blind), I would rank him a 6.5/10. Just near being borderline OP. Thing is, it does not take too much to move him past 7 in games. This is likely due to the "assassin meta" we are somewhat in. Vlad is a good counter to assassins because of his pool and sustain, making that lead fairly easy to get.

Because of the likelihood of him getting ahead in games if fairly high, I would say a slight numbers tweak or rearrangement in the future would be good. Just so he does not get past that point of OP-ness because of an unrelated change that he unintentionally benefited from. But as he is now, I would just monitor him or just lower his burst by a small amount so he still can get a lead, but he has to work at maintaining it slightly more.