So Vladimir's not a vampire...but what is he?

Note: I'm not totally sure if this should be in Gameplay or Story since this has elements of both, but since my prior thread went in story I'm placing this one here.

So, a few days ago I made a thread highlighting that Vladimir is not canonically a vampire, despite his affinity with pop culture interpretations out of the way.

Great, that's out of the way.

But a lot of people associate him largely - if not solely - with that. So we find ourselves with a bit of an identity crisis. Just who is Vladimir?

Everyone is going to have different answers - and I'd love to hear them. For some, he's just a mandatory vampire reference. To others, he's the %%%% cancer of top lane that ruined it for melees before the days of Lulu and deserves to be gutted to oblivion. For others still, he's a so-so easy-to-forget pick that comes along once in a while and either underperforms or somehow gets unbelievably fed and can reliably 1v3 mid-lategame. Perhaps he's just a pun-slinging mess of a Champion doomed by archaic game design. Perhaps he's a doorstopper in Riot's history as to why they no longer allow cost-less sustain.

I personally - as a devoted main - have two views of Vladimir. One that is of the character, and the other of the kit.

As a character, Vladimir is a strange example of Noxus of someone who deeply resembles the nobility that corrupted it in Darkwill's time, but also made his way to the top through sheer power. He's someone who doesnt need to take life or threats seriously, because that's what his power allows him, after all; what beats a power that can manipulate the very substance within your veins and arteries? The puns are a product of this carefree attitude, as he simply doesnt need to care about reinforcing winning strategies or his convictions. The vampire stuff reflected in his skins and general aesthetics? I choose to interpret that as two things: early design sin, when League of Legends wasn't developed enough to have truly unique ideas and a blood character must also be vampire-esque (no offence meant towards Riot) and letting their characters be a little quirky - such as Mordekaiser's awesome yet generally nonsensical fondness for heavy metal.

There's also a separate part of him that I personally believe would serve to flesh out his lore, but for now that's non-canon, so it's not important.

From a gameplay perspective - and what it probably more important considering recent announcements, Vladimir is primarily three things for me. Firstly, he is defined by his sustain. There are many Champions in League that have sustain and a good number of them are quite reliant on it ( , but take away their sustains and the core parts of their kit would still be intact. Nasus would still be known for his stacks, Swain for his DoTs and Ravenous Flock, Xin for his sustained AA-based damage and cc, and Aatrox would still have his Revive Passive, CC, and multiple AS self-buffs. Vlad without his sustain would be in objective terms; a low-impact, low-cd, low-range, minimal-cc mage with incredibly slow scaling, good defensive stats for a mage via passive and an untargetable gimmick.

Or in my terms: not-Vlad. Three of four of his abilities have some form of healing or heal-buffing. His high-intensity self-sustain needs to stay if/when Riot decides to rework him. I am entirely on board with making his primary source of sustain harder to benefit from or less binary than his current Q, but it still needs to be totally reliable.

Secondly, he is tanky. Both his sustain making his hp bar artificially bigger than it is and his passive making his hp bar actually bigger are the contributing factors. That needs to stay. Vladimir being the mage who finds greatest comfort in the middle of the fight is part of his gameplay identity. You take him mid against bursters because he can anti their burst with his hp pool and slurp all that health back up. You take him top against bruisers and tanks because he can match their beefiness.

Thirdly, there is a sense of versatility in playing Vladimir. You can go top or mid to suit the matchup, and beyond , you're pretty free to build as you please and should expect to see success. Want to go Burstimir and build as much AP as you want? Go for it, your passive will reward you for that and Sanguine Pool ensures (like mADC's each having some form of survivability in their kits) that you won't get blown up anyway. Tankimir? You'll become the closest thing League has to a true Drain-Tank that almost never dies. Somewhere in the middle? You'll get a little of both worlds and benefit immensely from it.

This is all just my opinion, I don't mean to present it as some form of Crimson Reaper gospel, but rather a one of the voices of a fan of the haemomancer. As I mentioned above, I'd love to hear what others have to say about Vlad. I hope someone at Riot sees this and at least takes a view like mine into consideration in terms of what to look to maintain, and if not then so be it.

Have a lovely day, all.