new vlad difficulty
Vlad was one of my best champs, but i have been doing really poorly with him since Riot remade him. His play style seems to have changed quite a bit. Any tips?
3 Comments
Well, for starters, don't expect too much from him. Play him for fun, don't play him in ranked.
I'd suggest rushing the defensive item that would help the most out of 
. You can just buy the defensive component if that's all you need, but at that point you might as well grab the CDR as well, and the items are basically done at that point.
If you have a passive/easy lane, rush Rylai's and grab Abyssal after to stop any early MR from stone-walling you.
Always buy Void ASAP if you see people building MR. MR is extremely effective against Vlad specifically due to how his E cost/pay-out works now. Its very easy for the enemy team to make it so inefficient its actually more of a detriment than a help unless your team is capable of hard carrying via follow-up.
Outside of that, lots and lots of HP. Have a 10, 20, and 30% CDR page for Vlad, and use whichever you think will help most in a game based on the defensive CDR items you'll need. If they're all AD, grab a 20 and take Zhonya's, and Warmog's for 40%, for example. You probably won't need the 30% page, but its nice to have for games you think you can snowball hard and run SV, Rylai's, Deathcap, Void, Liandry's.
Don't be afraid to buy Deadman's. Its basically perma-mini-ghost, considering you won't be doing much auto attacking until you're where you want to be anyway.
Same goes for sunfire (if against a lot of melees), or Randuins. Sometimes its worth giving up Rylai's for Randuins, if you need the armor. You just have to use the slow from Randuins a bit more wisely.
If you can, run swifties instead of CDR boots.
People are going to say rocket belt is good, but its only good for keeping a lead, mostly due to the damage portion of the active. Do not buy it if you're not ahead. The mobility isn't as good as people seem to think. You buy rocket belt for the pressure with the mini-boost and damage, nothing more. You won't have that pressure if you aren't ahead.
As far as gameplay, he's pretty straightforward now. When Blood Rush is coming up, try to move to land a charged E on your enemy and Q him after. Outside of that, focus on CS mostly.
Teamfights are entirely situational, but you essentially want to land E on squishies. Don't worry much about anyone else unless you won't be able to move to where you can hit squishies. Try to bait the enemy into over-extending, since you're essentially a tank now, land an ult, and let your team move in.
If the game goes on long enough, you WILL require a Zhonya's to stay relevant, since its the only way you can survive now, since your in-fight sustainability is so inconsistent now.
There are no proper tips, I'm sorry. Tried everything.. from tank to full AP and in between, even tried gunblade+Spirit Visage+spellvamp runes masteries, as well as adding lich bane for the extra damage, nothing seems to be working on him. It's just his new his kit is bad. He loses too much hp which makes tank builds useless. His Q AP scaling is bad and E does better with HP so building proper AP build is also useless. Building AD or hybrid is useless. Only thing that makes him somewhat viable is adding a lot of mobility so that you can do the hit and run thing.
It just he's not fun anymore.