It's getting harder and harder to believe bungie doesn't hate Warlocks. Between all the direct and indirect Shadebinder nerfs this season (a subclass which was strong but not op in PVE, and greatly below the Titan and Hunter subclasses in PVP) why is there such a disparity in abilities?
The Warlock melee has slightly more range, but a travel time, making it easy to dodge, additionally with no way to shatter and the melee's undocumented damage nerf, its now impossible to do enough damage to kill someone with a primary outside of just meleeing them on warlock, defeating the purpose of it's only range advantage.
The Titan melee on the other hand is instant, gives full freeze duration, and makes crystals which they can shatter to do still insane AOE damage, AND also shatter to synergize for even more grenade energy (and melee energy if they run the other aspect). All of this is in addition to the Titans original melee ability that gives insane movement options/can one shot by throwing you into a wall or off the map.
This isn't even discussing the rest of the subclass imbalances, yet the changes we get this season are a single buff to the already super strong hunter melee, and multiple warlock nerfs to hammer it down even further below the other classes. What's the balance justification for these changes other than hurting Warlocks?
Edit: Since this has blown up a bit there are some things I want to clarify; I play all three classes equally and genuinely enjoy the power fantasy of each. I by no means am calling for a nerf to the new Titan aspect, I think it actually solves the biggest problem Stasis Titan has in pve (having a pretty lack luster melee that doesn't synergize with the rest of the kit). Now you can make crystals with the melee, which you can shatter for grenade energy, use for ad clear and it pairs very well with charged with light/heart of inmost light for ability spam.
The issue I'm trying to bring to light is the disparity with which things have been handled in terms of class balance. The way Warlock kit functions is such that it has no way to slow and relies entirely on freezing to get rolling, along with no way to shatter other than shooting frozen targets. Due to this Warlock cannot reliably benefit from Whisper of Shards for grenade regeneration and was dependent on Iceflare Bolts, which has now had its grenade regeneration ability removed. Then for PVP I'm not disagreeing that there are benefits and negatives to each melee ability, but the reason warlock melee was nerfed in the first place was because of how terrible it feels to get instant frozen for so long with no counter play, something Titans can now do yet with the original duration, an easier time shattering and all while having all the other additional benefits I listed above. On top of all this the new reduced damage to frozen targets unfairly hurts Warlocks the most due to not having any means of shattering outside of shooting.
Finally when it's time for balancing we get massive (mostly deserved, but as always too far) Warlock nerfs after just over a week and the only other nerf has been a slap on the wrist to Hunter shatterdrive after 2 months. All while nothing has been done to the Titan roaming super which is still active despite having been activated at the beginning of my post, and having damage resist that's even more ridiculous than the other roaming supers in the game. Now with the new season Hunters get another buff to their amazing melee ability thats basically a thrown sential shield in terms of tracking and Warlock gets a new slew of unneeded nerfs to the point that it now directly hurts the synergy of the subclass in all aspects of play. I just want all of the classes to have their new toys be fun, viable, and be as (relatively as stasis can be) balanced, yet time after time it feels like Warlocks hurt bungie when they were a kid and they will never let it go. VOG coming back must have brought back memories of all that pushing Aethon off the edge.
Edit to my Edit: Alright Alright Alright, it's a new day and I decided to offer some realistic solutions for rebalancing stasis in hopes some get implemented, rather than just wasting time complaining on the internet. I won't talk about the nerf to the Warlock melee (no the new one), which was reduced from 90 to 38, as it was an undocumented change and I am for now giving bungie the benefit of the doubt and assuming it is a bug. I'm also not going to talk about any direct nerfs to Titan or Hunter subclasses, just ways to bring up Warlock onto a more even footing. Also warning this somehow ended up even longer than my last Edit.
1) Let Whisper of Shards give grenade regeneration for killing frozen targets, not just crystals, to counter the nerf to Iceflare bolts.
As it stood I can understand why Iceflare needed a nerf, it was frankly a must pick for any stasis Warlock between its 3 fragment slots, grenade regeneration and the ability to freeze extra targets; but the grenade regeneration utility needs to move to something else for the sake of build synergy. Since frozen targets are relatively more common than generating ice crystals (my Heart of Inmost light Titan would beg to differ), make the timer last something like 1 second per frozen kill rather than the 5 seconds you get per broken crystal. Alternatively give this ability an internal cooldown if you don't want us to have 100% uptime on it (something very easily achievable on Titan)
2) Make all freezes in PVP last the same amount of time ~1 second (with the exception of supers).
I see this change happening inevitably at some point in the future, but I'll talk about it anyway. Frozen from whatever source is incredibly powerful and shouldn't arbitrarily last 5 times as long because you were slowed before hand (something Warlock inherently struggles to do). Frankly even if things were equal timer wise Warlock still suffers more due to lack of shattering and the multiple steps needed to get kills with the super, but I'll settle for parity (example: you freeze and kill someone with shadebinder, the kill spawns an Iceflare bolt that freezes someone nearby, due to the nature of Shadebinder, by the time you heavy and wait for the travel time in order to shatter that person, they have already thawed out).
3) Make the Shadebinder in super travel a little bit quicker and make the heavy shatter attack travel faster.
As much as I hate suggesting any kind of buff to a roaming super, Shadebinder is just too dam slow for PVP. It only has a projectile attack and as such can't propel itself forward for momentum like most other roaming supers/has no movement tech unique to it like icarus dash or ionic blink for speed (other than float longer which makes you slower overall). Its also the only super in the game that requires two steps to get a kill (freeze and then shatter), even the other stasis supers have a method of 1 shotting non frozen targets: Titans can light attack with their melee and Hunters can direct impact you with their Kama, all while producing other unique benefits to their class (Titan can create ice crystals to take advantage of even after their super is over and hunter gets a slowing tornado for long after to slow and freeze which they can build into).
4) Personally I would like it if the Warlock super upon ending did one larger sized shatter wave (think the Aoe freeze effect Titan stasis has on pop, but at the end and for shattering).
This would alleviate some of the issues with the last point and also help with another one of the supers problems, that using the freeze projectiles uses super energy while shattering does not, so you often exit your super having sent out a projectile to freeze something that you can't conviently shatter. Due to this probably requiring an animation change I imagine it's far less likely to happen (but just think about how cool it could be to freeze a whole bunch of ads while in the super and then letting one final massive shatter wave kill everything, sorry I digress).
5) Remove all the debuffs players receive from the slow effect other than.. you know slowing.
For anyone that doesn't know the slowed effect does more than just reduce your movement speed, it also: shuts off movement abilities (can't dodge, ionic blink ect.), reduces ability regeneration, reduces aim-down-sights speed, reduces weapon reload speed, weapon handling, weapon kick direction and weapon accuracy. PVP in this game is all about movement and a slowing effect is already powerful enough, why does it also need to make it incredibly difficult to aim, shoot, regenerate abilities and prevent you from using movement abilities to escape from it? There's a reason why there's a sentiment amongst top tier PVP players that slowing is about as free a kill as being frozen and making this change would bring the three Stasis subclasses more in line with each other, while also reducing the oppressiveness of stasis in the PVP sandbox overall.
There's a few more minor things I could add, but I think everyone gets the point by now if you somehow managed to stick around for this long (that Behemoth is just about coming out of his super). Bottom line is I fucking love this game and I want it to succeed. I want to have fun be it in PVE or lord save me in PVP, and I want to be able to do that with all the classes, not feel like I'm forced to play one (or two) over the other due to what feels like a constant stream of either knee-jerk reaction nerfs that go too far, or out of the blue unnecessary nerfs with no buffs or rebalancing taken into consideration. Warlocks aren't fusion rifles, you can't just nerf them without cause because you feel like it.
Warlocksaren'tfusionrifles
submitted by Quintessential Vladimir guide for season 11
Well hello there wonderful people. My name is Calvin and I stream under the name
Elite500, as the title suggests, I’ve been challenger for 4 seasons now and ended it since the last 2.
I’ve played vlad throughout every meta, no matter how rough or how much the playstyle has changed, and I’m finally here, bringing to YOU the absolute ULTIMATE, QUINTESSENTIAL, HOLY guide, everything you will ever need for season 11. At the time of writing this guide I’ve played around 500 preseason games and half of them in high challenger.
Why play Vladimir? Doesn’t he actually suck? Isn’t he noobchamp?
Do you wish to experience the pleasure of
entering teamfights and leaving them higher hp? Do you want to dehumanise yourself to and not even recognise your fellow teammates as sentient meat lumps? Can you handle the responsibility to take every game post 20 minutes as your responsibility?
Of course you do.
Table of contents:
- Setups: we’ll go over the main 2 setups including items, runes, summoners, and build
- How to choose between the two setups and which play-style suits you best
- Early laningphase and how to play matchups
- Every matchup in the game including recommended setups for matchups
- Unleashing unholy wrath upon your foes in mid to lategame
- Combos
- Skin choice
Setup one, the way of the gigalord:
Back in season 7 the chad vladimir players received an upgrade from thunderlords decree, electrocute, termed GIGALORDS back then, it’s power has been dormant and ever waiting since the nerfs of
2018.
This path is more optimally suited for those who wish to have devastating all in damage, those who wish to win lane as early as level 3, those who want to annihilate and leave them with .
no counterplay 100-0s This setup is best suited and optimally played against melee champions such as Sylas, Pantheon, Yone, Yasuo, Ekko, Akali, Kata, etc.
Summoner spells:
Ignite and flash are a must take with this setup, allowing you to deliver sudden oneshots with flash and having beyond unholy all in damage with ignite. Ignite also helps us with nimbus cloak and with procing electro.
Runes
Keystone:
Of course you’ll be taking
electrocute as your keystone, it allows you to win a lot of trades early into the game, it’s easily proccable early with auto Q auto or auto E Q or even auto ignite Q.
The trading is nice although the main reason you take this keystone is for the HEINOUS all in damage it can do, most champions can literally be 100-0 oneshot at level 6 if they’re not innately invulnerable (looking at you galio).
Minor runes, domination:
Taste of blood is absolutely amazing and helps out in every melee matchup, feel free to swap this to sudden impact if you’re deranged and play this setup into ranged opponents. (sudden impact proccable with rocketbelt.
Poro ward is extremely consistent and can be stacked easily to grant you free 4 ap level 3 and 30 ap at around ~ 16 – 18 minutes depending on how actively you ward and where.
Ravenous hunter synergises so well with vlads huge point and click Q damage, easily accumulating 10’000 HP healed in a game. While it doesn’t sound like much, since the rune was changed from spellvamp to omnivamp it now will even heal you slightly on autohits even without stacks helping you outsustain early. Some crazy gamer chinese vlads will take ultimate hunter since their server is perma fighting, it’s also a viable choice but feels worse to me.
Secondary runes, sorcery:
For sure my favourite secondary tree to spec into, although this one is a lot more preference, I think all trees are balanced it’s just more playstyle, you flash like a maniac? Go inspiration cosmic insight with cdr shoes rush and enjoy less than 4 minute flash cooldown etc.
Transcendence holy MOLY this rune got such a nice change in season 11, 5 ability haste at level 5? Sign me the hell up. The ability cd refund is also amazing on vladimirs W since it’s basecooldown is like 30 seconds, allowing you sometimes to pool twice in fights.
Nimbus Cloak to make up for the lack of mobility before rocketbelt nimbus cloak helps out so much allowing you to kite and rundown pesky season 10 dashy champs with ease. Optionally gathering storm is also nice but with this rune setup you mostly play for early mid domination and nimbus is also great lategame. My games have been decided 1000x more by having more mobility in clutch scenarios than having 40 extra ap at 30 minutes.
For the mini runes always
Ability haste, AP, and scaling hp Build:
You best be prepared to build mejais.
Starting item:
Your starting item should be
dark seal refillable every game, the dark seal buff now giving hp and 5 extra ap is absurdly good for vlad, random lucky early kills giving 10 ap is also beyond bonkers. Shaving off 350g on your mejais purchase is also essential.
First mythic:
Hextech Rocketbelt is by far the best mythic you can go in every game currently, amazing active, amazing components, amazing mythic passive, it’s just THAT good. The dash and ms is a great engage tool, hextech alternator synergises perfectly with your ridiculous ignite electro damage, the passive giving you 5 flat pen is amazing since you can get 18 from sorc shoes and another 5 from mejais since it counts as a legendary, the more flat pen you stack the more efficient it gets.
Second item:
Mejais Soulstealer allows you to single-handedly decide whether you wish to win the game or lose it, it’s a must buy and goes hand in hand with this playstyle, one two kills with a mejais, over 10 stacks? Literally the game is a done deal at this stage. Rocket belt mythic passive giving you 5 pen for a 1250g purchase makes it even good to buy at 0 stacks. I have completely 1v9’d too many games to count in the highest of elos because enemies make literally one mistake and die once.
Third item:
Void staff third? WTF what if enemies have no mr elite? Well let me tell you about this stupidly broken item that straight up out damages a god damn DEATHCAP even at 30 mr !? ? ? the item is 131% gold efficient, let alone when you pile up your 28 flat pen that you get from completing it. Remember flat pen reduces enemy MR AFTER the percentage, so let’s say someone has 50 magic resistance when you buy your void, magic resistance WH OMEGALUL? 28|40% stats on 50 mr leaves enemies with a whole 2 mr, 2 mr!!!!!
Fourth item:
Rabadons Deathcap while not nearly as good as it was last season still will round up your build, if you have just a few mejais stacks and you get these 4 holy items, the game is literally already over.
Few champions can experience the delightful feel of going in 1v5 and returning at higher hp than before.
Shoes:
Unless you’re rocking cosmic insight and want türbo low summoner cd, sorc shoes are the must go 100% of the time. Why would you need damagereduction from tabis if you oneshot enemies, why would you need merctreads tenacity if you can just dodge with your W 4Head.
Sorc shoes penetration just perfectly synergises with the rocketbelt mythic passive since the more flat magic pen you stack the more potent it becomes.
What the hell is the last item?
At this stage your power is so strong the final item won’t make a big difference, need dps?
Cosmic drive, need a second pool?
Zhonyas, need spellshield vs evelyn and zoe? Banshees. The itemshop is your oyster, get whatever you want last, I usually like to top it off with zhonyas.
This concludes the way of the gigalords setup and we’ll now proceed to the other setup.
Setup two, consistency king & lategamegod:
This play style was the meta for the longest of time and still remains viable, farm for 30 mins and then fight once and win the game 4Head. This playstyle relies less on your opponents being bad and more so on the inevitable victory that is 300 cs vladimir at the same time it’s also praying that your team doesn’t just perma fight for no reason which kinda happens a lot as well in soloq because people like fighting for no reason.
Summoner spells:
Ever thought how if everyone does just one thing the same way people would become insecure to try anything else but that specific way? That’s my opinion on using ghost > flash.
With this setup I prefer taking
ghost over
flash and ignite secondary. Why? Now that ghost’s duration gets refreshed on kills or assists and gives tremendous move-speed while only being on a 182 second cd with cosmic insight (163 with lucidity boots) allows you to have it up at literally every possible random teamfight, the mobility is insane for laningphase as well. If you can kill your opponent with flash in a certain scenario ghost will do the job and more, what do you do vs a vladimir that has kill pressure on your and pressed his nitroboost button? Flash away? Jokes on you this shit lasts 10000 years and he’ll just inevitably catch up.
Ghost in teamfights is also ridiculous, pop it right before someone dies and you have like 15 seconds of speed duration, can catchup to
literally anyone even foolish galeforce buyers who think they are cool with their mini dash.(bit pixelated)
Ignite secondary lets you have some decent kill pressure even with this setup
You can of course go whatever you please, struggling with bully mages? Go
flash tp, feel like you can’t catchup to that Ezreal in the backline?
Flash ghost is the answer, etc, it’s all viable and just needs playing around.
Runes
Keystone:
Phaserush has been Vlad’s most consistent rune since seasons now. It offers a lot of versatility in the sense that it can be used to slide in an extra auto in trades, chase people down, escape ganks easier and of course mainly to slide into the backline like
Michael Jackson moonwalking on the rift. Just like electrocute it’s really easily proccable, just three swift strikes and you’re running like
yourprincess runs from apologizing to Tuesday Even your initial ult cast counts as one of the strikes, so you could ignite ult q and boom you’re already zooming.
Minor runes, sorcery:
Nimbus cloak is an insanely good rune for vlad since the main thing you lack is mobility, and the more you have the easier it gets to get even more. If you have a reliable way of proccing phaserush such as nimbus cloak ignite all your mobility issues are fixed.
Transcendence just like with the electro page it helps you lane giving you cdr as early as level 5, and if you stack enough ability haste with zhonyas or even legendary double stopwatch you can always do some funky last fight game winning shit like –> pool –> zhonyas –> get asisst so trans ticks in –> stopwatch –> pool again. It’s like 10 seconds of immunity winning you uber clutch games.
Gathering Storm what better rune suited for the lategame king himself. All other options like waterwalking and scorch are completely outclassed by this free stats rune. I’d say Vlad is the most efficient champion in the game when it comes to flat ap considering you have ap to hp conversion, absolutely massive ap scalings with damage and healing (wtF), and an amplification on all abilites with your ult.
Secondary runes, Inspiration:
Free boots are really good at helping you scale up consistently and the 10ms it gives you on top of regular boots means you just zoom that little bit extra.
Cosmic Insight is also amazing at lowering your summonerspells, combined with haste shoes you can get almost 70 seconds off your flash, how insane is that.
Build
If you’ve been shocked by going ghost ignite you’re going to be quite surprised by this.
Starting item:
Just like with electrocute,
dark seal refillable is a beyond bonkers good item to start with, however since we get free boots with this setup going dorans ring is a more affordable purchase as well into a more difficult matchup like Orianna or Syndra. My logic is if you back with ~ 350g you’ll be having to choose either between dark seal or boots, but since boots are out of the equation you don’t even need to think about them so dorans ring is a lot more affordable. At the same time this setup focuses mostly on reaching unholy power as fast as possible.
First mythic:
Mythic? Only insecure players build mythic items first.
We build
DOUBLE FIENDISH CODEX that’s right. Become unstoppable. Vlad turns AP into a hyper efficient stat already with his insane scalings, so what about a 114% gold efficient PURE ap and ability haste stat? Fiendish codex’ passive is no longer unique so you can stack them.
From experience I’ve felt that anything more than 2 feels awful and going only 1 is also a viable option, although we want to accelerate ourselves and by this I mean let’s say we just pushed out midlane wave and we have some tempo. Raptor camp is up and your jgler doesn’t need them, you take them in 15 seconds total, because of this, the next time you take them you could afford another item meaning you took them 10 seconds in total, the next time 5 seconds and so on and so fort.
Getting pure ap and cdr allows you to do this faster and ultimately accelerating yourself to a point of having 300 cs at 25 minutes and being able to completely devour anyone in sight.
Second item:
Since I’m addicted to
Mejais I like to buy it second, however with this setup you can skip it, if you fall behind even slightly mejais won’t get the free 5 penetration that you would’ve gotten with a regular rocketbelt build and it becomes really hard to get back into the game. Just remember if you need the power of GOD to win this game, don’t hesitate to buy the holy bible.
The real Second item:
Now that you have around ~ 100 ap
Rabadons deathcap becomes efficient, even in its pathetic nerfed state it’ll still transform you into an onmipotent being. Deathcap is 92% item efficient with just it’s own AP and gets increased by 20% for every 100 ap so making it at MINIMUM 112% gold efficient of RAW pure AP power which Vladimir makes such enthusiastic work with. Now imagine if you had a mejais with some lucky 10 stacks on it, 136% gold efficient pure ap item combined with this? Oh Lord. Full mejais and dc = 357 ap = 500 hp more for FREE due to crimson pact.
Third item:
Most sane enemies when pressing TAB and seeing there is a 200 cs vlad at 16 minutes with a deathcap completed and double codex eagerly wanting to devour their feeble adc souls will attempt to purchase some magic resistance.
Falter their plans by buying an early
Void Staff, just like the logic we applied earlier with electrocute, void staffs 131% gold efficiency combined with sorcerer shoes allows you to deal near true damage to low mr targets and to those with more than room temperature IQ who’ve built MR? Well you have a voidstaff, what good does it do them.
Fourth item:
Woo! It’s mythic time yayyy!
This is the most satisfying thing ever, building a mythic item when you have 3 legendaries all giving you instant mythic passive.
At this stage you can choose pretty much all mythics, need more haste? Go
Nightharvester for unrivaled dps, playing against a lot of squishies? Unleash unholy burst with the
Rocketbelt, enemies stacked giga nitro mega amounts of mr and you’re having a tough time penetrating through it? Literally buy a
Liandry’s, it shreds enemy MR making your voidstaff and sorc shoes deal hyper amounts of damage. Since you have 2 codex Liandry’s is giga cheap at only 2500g and doesn’t eat up another inventory slot.
You can even decide to buy something else if you’re in desperate need for it like a Zhonyas or Morrelo, it’s not essential to have a mythic but I highly recommend it leaving it no later than this.
Last item (if you were a chad mejais buyer)
Just like the other electro setup, you may go whatever your heart desires as final ap item.
Enemies have a lot of ad? Zhonyas, need dps? Cosmic Drive, need magic res? Spirit or Banshees.
That’s pretty much it to the phaserush build, we’ll be covering when to go these setups next.
How to choose between the two setups
I am of the opinion that you can go either setup 100% of the time every game and not need to switch things up to find success, however there are scenarios where one is better than the other.
For beginners I recommend learning just one setup first or your opinion might get clouded by low sample size.
I also have a complete matchup spreadsheet with every matchup midlane in the game If you’re more of the assassin player, wanting to oneshot specific targets and having ridiculously high kill pressure in lane I recommend going electrocute setup.
If you more feel like playing an actual controlmage and maintaining 10cs/min and unleashing unholy wrath lategame with zero counterplay then go phaserush setup.
In a realistic scenario if you’re laning vs melee champions electrocute is much better for lane and the minor runes will have a lot of effect vs them. You can go both setups in both types of matchups and it’s perfectly viable you just have to be aware of your weaknesses and play around them.
Currently I think the meta favours the electrocute setup a tiny bit more since there is a lot of early fighting and lane prio is important to help your jungler. That being said having ghost ignite phaserush means you can join any fight you want since your sums are super low so try both and see which one you like more.
Early laningphase and how to play matchups
Level 1 – 5
With both play-styles you want to play as safe as humanly possible with Vladimir pre 6, try manage the wave so it’s always near your tower so you can’t get ganked and are easily able to lasthit. It is ESSENTIAL to have on point last hitting skills, if you do not, go practice tool right now and get 100cs in 10 mins with only autohits. These early autohits really dictate the pace of the rest of the game, same theory with raptors, how much money you have dictates how much money you’ll be able to generate.
If your lane opponent doesn’t have teleport (mostly melees) you can play a little aggro and sneak in a quicky succ every now and then onto your lane opponent and eventually either deplete their hp so they have to recall or their mana so they become obsolete.
Don’t use your E early much as it mostly hurts yourself more than it hurts anything else, the self damage is always the same percentage so it really feels bad using it early to sprinkle tiny 60 damage blood bolts at the cost of like 100 hp.
You may spam Q on the minions as long as you don’t end up pushing the wave to the enemy, what makes vlad really hard to play in high elo is players will freeze the wave as soon as it starts to push vs them and it’s impossible to unfreeze unless you call your jungler to help.
If you’re playing vs someone with teleport it’s extremely ballsy to trade with them as if you do they’ll empty their mana on you and hp and just recall and come back leaving you with low hp and unable to buy items and locked in lane, going teleport yourself with phaserush of course halfway counters this awful spot to be in.
Level 1 – 5 early electrocute cheese
This strategy is really really easy to pull off,
This video shows exactly how to pull this off, it’s incredibly easy to do with electrocute since you also have taste of blood and ignite if your lane opponent dares to contest this you can just punish them.
Basically you want to create a slowpush early, how do we do this? Try to fish for auto attacks or a Q on your opponent, aggroing the minions onto you, since they will chase you let them be pulled into your wave, while you drag them they will not be attacking your minions meaning the wave will push in opponent direction.
If you pull this off and just gently last hit the next 2 waves and then push in really hard when canon wave comes you’ll have stacked a MASSIVE ally wave under enemy turret while you have tempo to do whatever you like, recall get amp tome / ward for jungler / invade with jungler / anything you desire.
And what about my enemy mid, won’t he follow me and stop me? But how? He’s got 3 waves stacked under his turret trying to last hit them, he can’t just leave that or he’ll instantly lose the game.
This concept is very very important to vladimir players as your all ins are often able to 100-0 opponents, so if we do this strategy of stacking big waves at level 6- 9 and dive the lane opponent and they die they lose like 3 waves worth of cs, this is literally unbearably game losing for them and it’s SO easy to pull off especially in low elo. What on earth do you do vs a vladimir who stacked a wave, has an alternator, electro ult and ignite up and is furiously waiting to oneshot you?
Literally no counterplay other than going barrier or buying hp / mr. How do I get the wave to push into my direction so I can lasthit?
It’s very simple, most people will hit the wave level 1 like the utter troglodytes they are, just match their auto attacks and leave one out every few, once it slowpushes into your direction all you have to do is not kill the minions and let them be near your turret. The wave will ALWAYS freeze if 3 full hp caster minions are left alive and the next wave’s melee minions don’t go under tower.
Like this we can freely scale up to the lategame terror that Vladimir is.
My lane opponent has also read this guide and isn’t hitting the first wave? Wtf? If you can, push push push like your pregnant and try get your minions under enemy tower, if this happens the wave will simply bounce and start pushing towards you.
These 2 concepts are the simplest and most essential thing to know when playing Vladimir.
First recall
You’ve got around 1000g? You should start to look to setup a recall so you can either buy a
fiendish codex (phaserush setup) or a
hextech alternator (electrocute setup)
How do we do this?
We already know how to stack waves and crash them under enemy tower, so we simply preform just that, we push the wave out and once it’s under tower run away quickly and recall, the bigger the wave the better since it traps your lane opponent in lane while you get to recall and only lose 1-2 melees.
If you don’t want to lock your lane opponent in lane or they have tp or just don’t care didn’t ask, just push the wave out before or during cannon wave since cannon minions can tank like 8 or more turret shots meaning you have tonnes of time to walk back to lane without missing anything.
Not missing any cs during your recalls is really essential as Vladimir especially because you can’t afford to fall behind.
Vs mages who like to buy lost chapter it’s extremely important you figure out a way to force a recall before they get that 1300g because if they do somehow get that you’re in for a fun cock and ball torture session, especially with Orianna. That’s why if you can recall with 1000g you can get a fiendish and they’ll just feel awful buying a god damn mana crystal.
Post recall
You’ve just walked back to lane, you’re level 6 and have your 1000g item and haven’t lost more than 1 minions worth of exp. What do you do now?
Since you have some AP you finally get to have more than cannon minion levels of wave-clear
If you’ve got an easy matchup and are not afraid to push out the wave start pushing and looking for things to do on the map. It’s important to ask yourself these questions WHILE pushing so you don’t waste time making a decision when you already have tempo.
Can you kill your lane opponent? Dive him.
Can you help your jungler invade? Go for it, just remember you’re on a tight time limit if things don’t go well and you’ll lose farm mid with no gain.
Can you gank / dive bot/ top? If there is a guaranteed pay off, (know all summs, ults etc) then go for it! Just don’t risk anything, remember if both teams are equal you are likely to win because of vladimirs inevitable lategame scaling.
If you don’t have any options, simply ward or clear wards, going out of enemy vision forces your lane opponent to shit their pants and ping ? ? ?? ? ? ? ? where he go? Which takes focus from other players and makes them play accordingly.
Midgame
It’s
VERY important to go to sidelanes
IF Your botlane’s tower died and now enemy adc and sup go mid and try to take yours, since you have fuckall waveclear you can’t hold them away from the tower and end up losing more and more. It’s very important to also not share exp since the support will probably try defend midlane with you, you want to soak up that juicy sololane exp and start exerting pressure in a sidelane.
If you see lots of champs in one spot be ready to move asap because a teamfight might break out, although as Vlad maintaining 10cs/min is above everything, you can’t have any less if you want to carry games so some teamfights are just lost causes and don’t hurt yourself more by trying to get there in time.
You can generally tell when a fight will happen when either:
- Herald is up and no dragon
- Dragon is up
If ally mid tower is still up and dragon is down and herald is up what do we do?
Of course sidelane top and tell your
teleport toplaner to go bot and your adc supp to go mid, it’s very likely that a
herald fight will start and you wanna be there.
If dragon spawns and your team wants to contest that? Sidelane botlane and rotate mid at least ~20 seconds before dragon spawn so your adc can walk up reliably.
The only fights you
REALLY need to be a part of are for objectives
especially dragon, ESPECIALLY ESPECIALLY if you don’t have any dragons at all and enemies are stacking them.
Even the most terrible scaling champions like pantheon will be REALLY obnoxious lategame if they get something like an infernal dragon soul.
Just one or two dragons means enemy team won’t receive the dragon wincondition at like 20 mins which means the game will go on for longer, what happens if the game goes on for super long? Uh oh stinky poo poo lategame vlad arrived and you just take what you please at that stage of the game anyways.
Lategame & Teamfighting
This part of the game is much easier with
phaserush and ghost especially with ghost since it also has built in scaling with level, duration and speed.
If you have the potential to reach the backline and kill them then that should be your priority above everything, in 99% of the scenarios this is easily achieved with ghost phaserush, since you literally can’t run away from a ghosted vlad. Not even Ezreal with double flash can run, not even kassadin with 4k mana can blink away in a straight line,
and god have mercy if Vlad gets his ghost extended with an asisst or kill.
If you’re playing with electro and your rocketbelt isn’t enough to get you into the backline then try your best to hit as big of an ult as possible and peel for your next strongest member which is usually the adc. A fullbuild vlad demolishes anything that dares approach.
Most fights are extremely obvious when they happen late into the game, they’re either around sieging or around objectives like dragon and baron, you should always be around those when they spawn and farming nearby camps and minions.
Even late into the game you want to be farming farming farming, vlad is a super high resource champion, I’d honestly say the highest resource hog in the entire game, not even kassadin needs this much money, but not even kassadin can just engage 1v5 and demolish everyone.
Ability maxing
You want to
max your Q first on both setups, however if you are ahead and are going for the double fiendish codex setup I recommend putting 4 points into Q and then start maxing E out, if you do this your E will oneshot the enemy casterminions extremely early, normally only after lvl 11, with this setup as early as level 9.
So
Q → E → W and R of course at 6, 11 and 16..
If you’re playing vs a melee champ in lane going
W level 2 is definetly viable and can catch people off guard like a talon jumping on you without expecting you to pool. It does decent damage and slows like crazy unexpected, good for making enemies eat towershots when they think they can just weave in and out.
Combos
There aren’t really many “combos” and it’s mostly just generic efficiency and logical thinking, you make up a lot of things on the fly.
Here is a link if you are adamant on learning combos. Say we want to proc electrocute or phaserush level 1
Auto Q Auto There is also a multitude of ways you can combo with quick cast, smart cast, input buffer etc.
For the full combo with all sums, what works best for me:
Smartcast all abilities, Q for an empowered Q ready,
Charge E –> Flash –> Release E –> Ult –> Q – Ignite Some people like to
ult first as it releases E automatically upon pressing R however I feel like it’s a tiny bit clunky and if you release E manaully it’s literally impossible to react to unless predicted.
Super late into the game if you have phaserush you could also if you see enemies clumped up and you know they won’t be for long:
Flash –> R –> E W Since you flash you’ll instantly be able to ult and have nimbus cloak movespeed to make sure your E and W connect with someone, if they do you get phaserush and are able to chase everyone down once you come out of pool, pooling instantly doesn’t matter as much as well since if you hit a fat R it’ll heal you like crazy, this catches enemies off guard a LOT even in high challenger.
Skin Choice
Of course the most important part of the guide.
The tierlist goes like this:
Marquis: 9/10, Extremely small model, feels amazing to play with, cheap asf, regular ult is sometimes invis vs bigger targets like cho’gath.
Bloodlord 8.5/10, A timeless classic with absolutely insane taunting game, instantaneous laugh. Absolute badass voiceline, sounds and animations that make you feel allpowerful but at 1850rp? Idk..
Nightbringer: 8/10 Probably my most played, shortish cape, nice sounds and animations, literally invisible ultimate, beyond pay2win, if you’re looking for the most pay2win its probably this one.
Darkwaters: 7.5/10 basically budget nightbringer with a giga big nasty looking cape. Also has an invisible ult, arguably more invis than nightbringer.
Cosmic Devourer: 7/10 I like the stars aesthetic but imagine making a new skin without pay2win ult, what are you doing right??
Academy: 6/10 Kinda slick, not having a cape and being in a weird suit looks good but his hands look literally cancerbig.
Soulstealer: 5/10 wtf are these sounds, legit sound like it’s windy outside and has the most ugliest cape in the game.
Default: 4/10 bloodlord should be default and this should be removed, legit so beyond ugly.
Count: 1/10 Scuffed ass default vlad chroma so bad it should be against the geneva convention.
Vandal: dugu/10 You have to say no homo before using this skin, never touch another man’s skin.
Nosferatu ?/?? Absolute power.. At a price.
General tips
The minute you forget to farm is the minute you’re out of the game,
always farm. Taking jungle camps is really fast after double codex
Don’t be scared to use
ignite generously, if it means your opponent runs out of pots they’re FUCKED since you can just trade 50 hp for 300 of yours and you’ll eventually outsustain.
If you want fast results
NEVER blame your team, even if they fucked up, what good does it do you to just move on? Try figure out what YOU could’ve done to prevent x from happening
If you’re extremely strong and baron is already up, just tell your team to start it with you, you don’t have to finish it but it’s a
for sure way of starting a teamfight and making enemies fight you when you want it. Worst case scenario you keep hitting baron, they steal it, you end their lives, gg.
The period of where you have crimson rush gets
extended by E, Zhonyas, and Pool. For some reason if you have enough cdr and pool as soon as your E ends and start a new channel in pool that
E will have no animation and be invisible, not very usable though. If you have any questions, ask me anything I’m always happy to spread light on things I didn’t elaborate on. I also stream of course on twitch.tv/elite500, if I didn’t cover something feel free to ask :D, preferably on the post instead of on stream so others can see it too, I'm streaming as i post this guide so i'll
reply to comments in queue streaming right now again so i'll reply to comments in queue
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