Possible Upcoming Vladmir Rework? - Ideas for changes
- What if Vladmir's healing was instead implemented like Taum Kench's grey health, where his skills would heal him slowly over a duration of time?
e.g.
Passive - Blood Fusion - Vladmir's skills all give him a shield that converts slowly to health over a duration of 4 second(s). While in combat with enemy champions, Vladmir's abilities will give him additional shield strength proportional to the time spent in combat, up to 2% of his max health per cast after 8 seconds, this buff decaying after 3 seconds of non-combat. Vladmir's shields cannot go over his maximum health.
**Q - Transfusion **- Vladmir deals flat damage to a unit and gains a shield for a flat amount, gaining a speed boost of 20% movement speed decaying over 2 seconds. If the unit is an allied minion, Vladmir does not gain gold and gains no shield, and gets only half the movement speed boost. Cost: 2% of current health. CD: 10/8.5/7/5.5/4
W - Sanguine Pool - Vladmir morphs into a pool of blood, becoming untargetable. Enemies in the range of the pool are slowed by 40%. Vladmir gains a healing shield for 25% of the damage dealt to units. Cost: 30% of current health. CD: 26/23/20/17/14
E - Tide of Blood - Vladmir releases a tide of blood, spewing projectiles to nearby units. Upon reactivation, Vladmir will dispel any shields caused by his skills, dealing a base damage + 100/110/120/130/140% of the shield strength to the units hit by the initial projectiles and gaining 70%/80%/90%/100%/110% of the shield strength back as health immediately. The cooldown of this skill scales with health regen. Cost: 5% of current health for initial activation, no cost for second. The timeout for the second activation is 2 seconds. CD: 15 (- 0.10 health regen), minimum 2.
R - Crimson Ravage - Vladmir targets a nearby enemy champion, channeling and dealing 25/35/45% of their maximum health over 6 seconds and healing for half of that. Vladmir's shields, healing, and regeneration are boosted to up to 150/175/200% strength based on the closeness of Vladmir to the target for the duration of the channel while the tether is unbroken. Vladmir can still move while the channeling is occuring. Cost: No cost.
Explanation:
Vladmir is currently a bursty, sustained, healing damage-dealer top lane that is oppressive only to become a large threat late game. His weakness is his early game and long cooldowns.
Since Vladmir may get a rework, I would suppose that the first thing would be to try and solve his healing problems. What I propose is to delay Vladmir's healing by having it regenerate over a certain time, giving people a window to interrupt his sustain and making him weak to direct confrontations. Vladmir's E has also been replaced with a two-step skill that gives him a mechanism to sacrifice health for damage in the early game or be an emergency heal, and to allow him to scale better into the late game, as he will do damage based on his health as part of his passive (around 8% of his maximum health in an AOE).
By changing Vladmir's healing to shields, he has a way to bypass Grevious Wounds while also giving him a weakness: his shields are not actual health, meaning that any executes that act based on missing health will be stronger. Also, notice that all of his skills except for his ultimate require current health costs.
However, Vladmir also gains a large bonus: the longer he stays in combat, each skill activation will gain him additional shield strength based on maximum health. This means that his sustain depends on being engaged with an enemy champion--he needs to be close to be rewarded. Champions that can successfully deal damage and disengage will be able to reduce Vlad's sustain.
In addition to this, Vlad also gains more stickiness, as his Q would give him a movement speed boost. Although it seems it would be worse, Vlad wouldn't be as bad because he would automatically be more squishy due to the loss of his bonus Health/AP passive.
As Vlad's ultimate has changed, it would mean that the team fighting potential of Vladmir is different. Whereas the Vladmir supports his team through the damage amplification and final damage of the AoE ultimate, his ultimate would become a steroid and duelist ultimate. While this makes Vladmir a more poor mid-game fighter, his additional stickiness with his Q and healing/shield amplification would mean that Vladmir would be very, very tanky in teamfights and a better disruptor.
