6.9 New Vladimir has nothing in common with the old one. Vladimir main here. I'm about to cry.

Hello :) My name is Aleksander, and Vladimir was one of the most awesome champions for me, before 6.9 ofcourse. We all know he was easy to play and not so hard to master but thats not the point. There is a lot of easy to play champions, much easier and more powerfull then Vlad (Vlad before 6.9). Okey, here we go: I'm playing Vladimir since season 2, I'm playing Vladimir as one of my mains since season 4. He is not my main anymore, I think I've tried almost everything on him since 6.9 release.

Playing old Vlad was pretty amazing. You could do bunch of different things on him. If Your team needed a tank, here we go, You could go full tank + Will of the Ancients . A lot of hp made You heal pretty good as for almost full tank build. If Your team needed high burst You could go with glass canon kind of builds and still not get killed (Full ap made You tanky in the different kind of way. You were much easier to be hurt but Your healing was much better.) And finally the Vlad we've seen most of the time : spamming spells, the selfhealing machine. The balance between tankyness and ap items.

New Vlad in my opinion is much worse.

-Your opponent can see Your Q cooldown aswell as Your third Q. Ofcourse, there is this movement speed buff... yeah, great. -You can have 300 ap and Q heals You for not even 100. Enemy team sees when You have this godlike third Q thing heal. Once You can use it, they will simply stun You or walk away far enough. There is no other proper healing source except for ult. Playing old Vlad was more like.... "Okay, i got Will of the Ancient, now every spell i use heals me enough to survive. Yay" and Will of the Ancient wasnt the Must Have item. I had many games without this item. Vlad without will of the ancient before 6.9 was still better in case of healing himself then he is now. Every Q was fair. Now, when You run from Your opponent You struggle like "damn it damn it... i need this third Q right now. I cant even use my E to slow enemys becouse it slows me down... and KILLS ME! "

-Your opponent can see Your E channel. By the way E was much funnier to play before rework. In both old and new E You can locate the champions in bushes and stealth, but old one was easier to see.
-Vlad before 6.9 was able to do the fast and nice combo(fast is the key word): R and Q/E + E/Q and W at the end to as fast as possible hide from almost every kind of damage. No You have to wait with Your E and You have to care where You stand becouse of minion and chamion blocks. New E are now projectiles that has a some kind of speed and they're gone right after. Many times playing ranked i was casting E when enemy was in range but the projectiles never got'em, becouse they got out of the range. Old E was still blockable but once You casted it with the enemys in range, You could be sure They will get hurt.

-R is pretty the same but different :P It lasts 4 seconds now, instead of 5 which is fair. Every patch since the end of the season 4 is trying to make game more aggresive and faster in action. So yeah... team fights lasts less so ult does. The heal from ult is pretty huge but... rarely im alive to experience this heal. Before 6.9 Vlad was "all in" battle mage with low range etc. Now everytime before i fight im scared how fast i can die even with 4k hp or more. My E hurts me, my W hurts me, the only real heal i have is third Q (seriously.. vlad with over 4 k hp and the Q heals him for 100.... thats a joke) and the ult if i survive. Once hard ccd and im most likely gone even with full tank build. The next funny thing is... when You go full tank Your E becomes not worth using. It hurts You more then enemies do. And as i said... the healing is not always there.

-Vlad without Visage is quite useless at this moment. Morello is stronger then ever before, mages got update, there is a lot of them, there is almost no game without morello.

I have tried almost every mastery tree combination. My favourite so far is 0-21-9... where You incrase all Your heal income.

I have tried almost every rune combination aswell. The runes i prefer are 20%cd late game. I tried spell vamp runes but it doesnt change a lot. By the way many itmes got 10% cd now. But the things is.. unless You fight full ap team - there is not point in having Void Staff... unless You fight full ad team, there is very few matchups when You need this hourglass. Why? Becouse items without hp are quite low for Vlad now. He is no longer the champion we know. He is almost 100% different. His playstyle, his survability and many other things are completly different.

Next huge problem? Maybe the problem isn't his kit, just the numbers they took out spellvamp on hexteck items which was the main reason vlad was strong to begin with. His new healing is pathetic unless he's literally near dead.

I can see that Rito tried to make the best of this Vampyre kind of champion but... he feels really bad in gameplay. What else... Champions like Maokai, Sion, Ekko or Malphite do more damage while going full tank and having more CC/utility.

I think like i have much more to say about this new Vlad and how disappointed am I but thats what i wrote up here is pretty much most important. He is harder to play and worse in every way even when You already know how to play him. And "how to play" is nothing like an old Vlad.