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Man, Riot, I want to refund my Vlad skins so bad. His rework totally ruined any fun playing him.

Shinjusuke··5 votes·821 views

Like holy shit.

One of the things I wanted the most out of this midyear mage update was to finally, FINALLY be able to pick Vlad without either forcing a 20 min surrender or being completely useless.

But holy shit. Holy fuuuuuuckin' shit.

This champion feels AWFUL to play now. Outright completely 100% awful.

Sure, his first 4 levels or so in lane he's able to do a fair amount of bullying. Everything past that point is not only not fun, but downright INFURIATING.

  • Crimson Rush feels like shit. It just does. I am sorry if I offend whoever was in charge of Vlad's rework, I don't mean to hurt any feelings, but my fuckin' god I don't know how CR survived the chop block.
  • E being a set 10% max health regardless of charge time, requiring a long, ridiculously telegraphed cast, inflicting a slow on Vlad and being a blockable projectile? For real? NOBODY noticed how frustrating and gimmicky this spell feels?
  • R having a large portion of it's power infused into the healing aspect that only goes off AFTER the explosion? When, y'know, the teamfight is always already over?

For the sake of trying to be constructive (even though you and I both know Riot will just push that hotfix, maybe throw some stuff in for 6.10, and never think about Vlad and Swain again), here's what needs to change:

  • Crimson Rush has 3 options. It will feel like garbage until one of these happens. -- a much longer window. Like at the absolute minimum a 4 second window. -- Activation every other cast of Q. I don't know if a Rioter has ever been in a teamfight, but expecting 3 Qs in your typical teamfight is just.. what? You want Vlad to be on the frontline all that time to be effective obviously, but if anyone had actually played him, you should've noticed he won't work that way with his current kit. -- Just remove the thing entirely. It feels awful. I'm not entirely convinced it wouldn't still feel awful if you "fixed" it.

  • E needs to just... wow. E needs a rework. -- Way shorter charge time. -- Less telegraphing. -- Health cost needs to scale with charge time. -- No self-slow. Like for real? You're spending 10% of your health, letting EVERYONE know you're casting it, charging for an eternity AND probably putting yourself in a shitty position just to hit anyone with it, and you have to slow yourself to do it? Seriously? .....SERIOUSLY? -- Change it from a goddamn blockable projectile.

  • R needs to not heal from it's burst. That's really it. It's WAY too late by the time it bursts. Most of the time you just walk away cuz the teamfight is over and say "...okay... that's nice I guess.." -- I'd prefer to have it heal over time while ticking down, maybe providing half the current heal over the tickdown and the other half when it explodes would be a compromise, but at the moment it just feels pointless in the majority of cases.

These aren't statements of balance. His win rate is really low right now, so maybe he needs work power-wise, but that's not what I'm trying to get fixed. These are statements of infuriating pain points that make the entire experience of playing Vladimir feel crippling, pathetic and frustrating. I'm incredibly disappointed by what I had hoped would be an interesting and engaging rework and would very much like to see a considerable amount of alteration done, because to be perfectly honest I think it's pretty obvious that he needs it.

I'm hopeful that Riot won't write off his importance or take 4000 fuckin' years to actually fix him, because frankly I've been waiting for several seasons to be able to actually play Vladimir, and this whole change didn't just make him weak, it made him absolutely no fun to play.

4 Comments

SaltyKracka1 votes

Vlad has never been fun to play.

Irarius1 votes

he has a bug right now that if you have blood rush and use q too eraayl like then its up then you wont get the extra dmg nor the heal so i feel with you i feel robbed of a champ and the fixes that are coming look shitty to me and do not adress these problems

Fovere1 votes

Crimson Rush was such an idiotic mechanic.

They basically halved his Q damage and put some of it back into CR. It would be fine without the timer, but 2.5 seconds just to do the same damage as pre-work vlad would already have done with his first 2 Qs is far too limited.

His E is far too expensive for what it gets you. Making it blockable further limits it, the slow isn't all that useful since rylai's is a core item for most vlad players and already has a built in slow. So you are basically trading a self slow for a little extra damage by charging to full.

Old Vlad hasn't been played much since maybe S3/2. For teamfights you'd basically run in and r / q/ e/ q/ e and w out after taking some damage. The damage + damage amp on your R was where a lot of your value was for your team, both aspects of which got nerfed.

New Vlad has less value for a team. His E does a great deal more self-damage for less reward, and he has no real way of healing it back up, losing him his classic sustain in lane and making him a suicidal lemming in teamfights

Irarius1 votes

and srsly i loved vlad before, but this now is an atrocity, his winrate seems to be the third lowest ingame, and still he is called way too op, for no real reason, and i rly think we will never see somethign good cause why should riot listen, also refund that would be nice right, i got a skinn cause i like to PLAY the champ and now he does no longer make any fun to play at all, all of youre points are right and i woudl even say the ult could use execute dmg or something, i eamn this is the same problem i got with xerath, you have an ult which is build as a tool to deal extra dmg and THEN kill the target if its low, so you have a heal on it to play maybe more like zed in a manner, but you get punished for trying cause

the ult does little to no dmg, it is only at ap build a good kill tool, EVEN IF the new vlad says go build more hp--- logic pure give him an execute style ult with no execute

his ult heals you AT THE END OF THE FIGHT which does only heal good after a teamfight,--- so you can push wave ? even if you got q to heal? yeah logic

his e is punishing you with slow as you said and dmging yourself for 10% you can slow and dmg them -- okay mate i mean you even get to buy a slow item but well

the q is as you said just bad and all of youre points are justified, HOWEVER the main problem i got is the first 1-2 qs are not even worht using i just finished a game and it felt AGAIN just so weak, i got healed for 50 hp with lvl 5 ult and was not even ignited, i just died because the charged q did mediocre dmg and thats it, it feels like the q charged should be the normal q, <.<

i would say he should be like keeping the stacks unti you use them, also how about i can stack like 2 up and use that, i rly wish they would return theold vlad, or give spellvamp back

i do not even understand why they deleted it, all they said we do this BUT VLAD GETS A REWORK SO WELL THATS WHY i rly rhought he gets now spellvamp or something

just for the xerath example, you got xerath who is an atillery mage made for LONG RANGE he gets off guard and dies, his stun was made to suck asss in close range

buit he gets a passiv that forces him to close combat, gg rito get punished------------ however vaigar had a similiar passiv, but it was passiv regen AND they got rid of it because they stated this passiv was an EXCUSE FOR HIGh mana costs, which is funny because thats why xerath got this passiv

so logic is not rly riots thing and some champs get abilitys and changes that make little to zero sense given the champ and its kit. i mean look at old vlad and xerath

both had some sort of use for every ability, vlad could stack heals up

which stacked q and w heal uo emense, this would make him later very strong if you got SPELLVAMP and even as a tank

it would stack dmg and with ult it would deal such an intense amount of dmg, in short intervals,

now vlad got the old w so less heal cause no spellvamp AND no stack uo with e he loses a solid heal on every q for a frequent heal that can be dodged easely, in any case the decisions make not much sense he should maybe even get changed in the numbers like crazy

like darius every ability gets nerved now aat lvl 1 and gets over beast with lvl 5 with higher scaling and faster reactions, so i compensate for the lack of pure ap building and the extra amount of hp it works for darius and other juggernauts, they SCALE into lategame, vlad feels like a juggernaut right now, just the dmg is way to small and the regen he has to have is not there

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