You want Vlad to be more selfish, and I couldn't disagree more. The fact that his ult turns his entire team into murderbots is a key reason I want to bring Vlad instead of any other mage. Is the power flashy and visible? No, but we don't need great big numbers in the center of our screen to know whether something is effective or not. Because we're intelligent and can read the skill descriptions and understand how they work, we can use them and feel rewarded.
My point is his ult feels awesome. It looks cool, it sounds cool, and it has very clear indicators for who's been affected by it.
Let's suppose you get your wish and do away with Vlad's ult. Well, what do you replace it with?
A single-target nuke (a la Syndra or Malz)? Now you've turned Vlad into an assassin. The rest of the kit now has to be changed, and Vlad's pattern suddenly revolves more around his ult and less around his Q-E patterns. Good job fundamentally changing the way the character feels to play.
How about a more selfish AOE nuke? Well now you've got a new problem. If the nuke is good enough to be on par with the old one, Vlad is doing all the damage himself (instead of his team contributing), and you've got new balance problems, because the new ult allows him to chunk down the enemy team, and unlike the old one, he no longer needs his team's help. Alternately, you just have an ult that's weak. For example, you have the current ult's base R damage but no damage amp. Now Vlad still feels the same, but you don't have any reason to bring him anymore. Instead you play Swain to do everything old Vlad used to do and everything new Vlad does better.
Instead, you say, let Vlad have a weaker ult so the rest of his kit can be stronger, and to that I say you're out of your mind. Vlad's Q absolutely cannot be buffed. Were you playing the game before the current iteration of Vlad's Q? If you were, you already know that it was absolutely toxic in the worst way, and people who love Vlad all thanked our stars we got off as easy as we did. The only way Vlad gets a stronger kit is if it's a new one, and I will absolutely give up Vlad if they give him the Veigar/Ryze treatment.
The only point we agree on is the philosophical issue with respect to sustain. That is, I agree that WotA is a crutch for Vlad that does a lot of his heavy lifting for him. If Vlad were not in the game, WotA wouldn't be either, and I suspect after his rework it may disappear, since right now it only exists to prop him up. I would be happy to see Vlad's numbers tweaked so that the sustain that's in his kit is already budgeted. That way he can just buy damage or other stats he wants (and new Vlad players don't fall into the trap of over-itemizing for sustain).
I would not, however, be in favor of seeing sustain disappear from Vlad's identity, and I would absolutely be against having his early-late dichotomy changed. One of the things that I identify with Vlad is the notion that when other laners have to go back, Vlad can stay in lane. Does that affect the way he's played in lane before and after his power spike? Yes. I'm fine with that.
He doesn't come online until 9 (and WotA), but when he comes on, he comes on strong. His punishing early game is the price he pays for late scaling, and I much prefer that tradeoff than any alternatives (such as, for example, having a stronger early Q that doesn't actually drain any health until rank five or something).
It's not that the early sustain without WotA is awesome. It's terrible, and it's terrible because it's supposed to be. He's balanced around being very easy to punish early, because he's dependent on the WotA purchase for draining successfully along with ranking Q and CDR to be effective. In exchange he becomes a monster at 9.
If he no longer pays those costs for his wonderful late game, he's going to pay for it another way.
Sustain is character-defining for Vlad. He's sustain focused, and that means he has piss-poor sustain early (i.e., very easy to run himself out of health against a competent opponent) and amazing sustain later (when it matters more).
I like that. I want that to stay.
Partly it's because it's what distinguishes Vlad from other champs, but partly it's because for the first time Vlad feels non-toxic during the early and most volatile stages of laning while still feeling extremely powerful once he's online. That's a difficult balance, and one that's taken years to get for Vlad. Now you're suggesting the sustain focus go away, and with that goes the precarious balance state he currently enjoys. Once you start tampering with that, you've got a rocking boat, and Riot has shown often enough that they will go to very unpleasant lengths to still the ship. To put that another way, I prefer having Vlad dependent on WotA (and being gated by its purchase) and focused on sustain both early and late if it means that his power curve stays the same.
