Vlad was one of my first champions, precisely because he's newbie friendly. His skill cap isn't very high, his sustain means you can recover from mistakes, and his pool gives some gank safety. In teamfights, he has nice direct damage, and moderate area of effect damage, and no skillshots. This allows newbies to learn the macro game while not worrying so much about the micro game.
The tradeoff is that most people will play him passively in lane till lvl 6, because of is long q cooldown and his self damage from w and e. He can be bullied quite easily by mobile bruisers like Riven and Tryndamere. More experienced players can turn this around however. Once you can reliably last hit minions without your spells (something new players have difficulty with) you can save your q for harass. In this situation, Vlad becomes more dangerous, especially vs opponents that only want to farm.
While these can make Vlad frustrating to lane against, he has very direct and obvious counters. Grievous Wounds, Ignite, long range nukes and cc. Riven, Malzahar, and similar champs can shut him down quickly. Even after he reaches his spammy phase, he has no real way to disengage after his pool is spent, no cc, and and decent amount of Magic Resist will make him have to invest in penetration, which limits his access to big AP items.
Newbie friendly champs like Vlad are a very necessary part of the game if Riot wants to continue to expand the player base. Not every champion should be Lee Sin, Zed, Azir, and the like. In fact, there could probably stand to be a few more champions in Vlad's difficulty tier. Even in LCS tier play, champs like Vlad are nice to provide solid, safe picks to minimize risk in uncertain matchups.
So no, I don't really think he needs to be nerfed. Or reworked.
