Vladimir rework ideas
With Rito looking at immobile mages, I want to get my ideas for a Vladimir rework out, in hopes they will see it, and build off it.
The basic idea is to keep Vladimir as a high aoe damage dealer, and drain tank, but make his healing less immediate, to open more counter play. Jumping right in with the basic rotation,
Q, Transfusion: a single target nuke, on a very low cooldown, that costs health but does not return any, instead it leaves a mark on the target, Bad Blood, for 12 seconds. If Q kills an enemy monster, minion or champion, they leave a small puddle on the ground that counts as Bad Blood.
E, Tides of Blood: consumes all Bad Blood debuffs, damaging the enemy and sending a healing wave of blood from them towards Vladimir's current location (waves from minions and monsters are smaller and heal for less). These are slow moving skill shots, that travel from enemies to wherever Vlad was when he cast his E, Vlad can move forward to catch them sooner, or be bullied or displaced, away, and miss them. The waves move at about the speed of Nami's ultimate, and ignore all units except Vlad.
W, Sanguine Pool: relatively Unchanged. Unless, Vladimir has recently cast E, if Vlad casts Sanguine Pool while his waves from E are still on the map, they move rapidly towards him and as he absorbs them, Sanguine pool gains radius, damage, movement speed and duration. (the waves turn from slow moving skill shots, into fast moving homing missiles)
Getting his full combo off should feel really big for the vlad player, it requires set up time, damaging himself, positioning and using his only escape, offensively. This should feel both risky and highly rewarding.
This is the meat and potatoes of his kit, Vladimir wants to spend health to spread Q to a lot of enemies, use his E for damage and healing, and then use his W offensively, that's the basic playstyle I want to push him towards.
Base stats, Cooldowns, and Costs His base stats will probably require a buff, as he'll have to wait on healing much longer rather than having it on demand. The health cost on Q should be significant enough that he has to think about how low he's going to get before his E is off cooldown, and his enemies' all in potential. Likewise, the health cost on W should be punishing, unless he's able to catch enemies in it. E, on the other hand should have no or at least a nominal health cost. Q should be very spammable and pretty much replace his aa if he has the hp to spam it. E's cooldown should be ~15-10 seconds. And W's ~30-20
New Resource Blood Bank, 0-500. Casting Q on enemy champions, not effected by Bad Blood, gains 125 Blood Bank points, while casting it on a minion, monster, or champion already infected with Bad Blood yields 50. Casting Tides of Blood consumes all of Blood Bank, increasing the damage and healing by X. Vladimir loses stored Blood bank while out of combat for more than 20 seconds.
In order to push Vladimir towards aoe damage, I want to encourage him to cast his Q on as many different targets as he can before casting E. Note, Sanguine Pool does not build Blood Bank, because we want to punish Vlad for using W before E, or rather reward his enemies for forcing him to.
Passive and Ultimate His passive and ultimate, both are kind of take-it-or-leave-it to me. They might work just fine on this kit, or replacing them might be an opportunity to push him more in the direction we want, add something that really contributes to the kit as a whole, or mitigate any glaring weaknesses that might crop up.
Spell Vamp Lastly a special interaction for spell vamp should be considered, as having the ability to outheal the damage done to himself by Q might negate the kit's whole premise. Rather than a second passive, like Ashe has for crit, I'd like it if each spell had a unique interaction on Spell Vamp. Something like: Q, auto attacking an enemy infected by Bad Blood causes Vlad's aa to do bonus spell damage equal to % Spell Vamp, and heal him for the damage done. W, Sanguine Pool gains % Spell Pen equal to % Spell Vamp E, Increases the healing by % Spell Vamp But these are just some examples, the important bit is that Vlad still wants spell vamp, but his Q doesn't interact with it normally.
Thanks for reading, all feedback is appreciated!
P.S. I know that both Blood Bank, and Bad Blood are terrible names, they're just there as placeholders.