Vladimir champion spotlight impressions
Well, servers are down. Suprised? I’m not. In the meantime, I figure I’ll post some impressions regarding Vladimir. As I’ve said in every post since seeing his skillset, I’m pretty worried about how broken he appears. Take a look at the spotlight.
I think his skill set looks pretty cool, but consider what Phreak says about him.
“Vladimir excels at controlling the lane…At 500 health Sivir will die to Tides of Blood, Hemoplague, and Transfusion, even though I have nothing but a Doran’s Shield and runes (remember, health runes – not damage runes) for bonus damage.” Okay. That’s fine if he’s a caster with caster stats. But he gets health from his AP and vice versa, making him highly durable and highly threatening – bad mix.
“Gragas, Garen, and Sivir all try to kill me.” If you watch that point in the video (2:02), Phreak is way out of position, but he gets away easily because of Sanguine Pool. So far we have highly durable, highly damaging, excels at lane control, and has an escape mechanism. Got it?
“The invulnerability from the turret also makes diving a breeze.” Turret invulnerability…add it to the list.
“Vladimir really shines in team fights,” and, “My extreme damage output allows me to chop up Sivir very quickly,” and “Then as I take turret aggro, I use Sanguine Pool to dodge Sion’s Cryptic Gaze just before it hits me, allowing me to escape the turret.”
So here’s my question – where is Vladimir weak? He seems like the strongest 1v1 champion in the game, the best turret diver, a great farmer, probably a decent jungler, an absolute monster in team fights, and can escape anything you throw at him with a skill that is 1000 times better than Cleanse on a 20 second cooldown, you know, just in case you overextend.
This really makes me wonder how Riot selects an ability set for a champion. Is there some sort of matrix of skills/mechanics? If not, why not? If so, how did this guy get past the first stage of design without someone, anyone, saying “now hold on, guys, this is absurd.”
Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited to play him, but I’m just as unexcited about playing against him, and that’s not a good thing.
Well, I’m guessing SP doesn’t break you out of stuns like Cleanse does, so there is that.
perhaps he is so broken he broke all the servers upon his release?
Yeah… glad I’m not the only one who felt that way when I saw the “spotlight.” I was thinking what the hell. They aren’t even trying anymore to hide how broken some of their new $10 heroes are. Tank, DPS, AOE, turret invulnerability, zhongya’s+dps+lifesteal, rylai’s natural synery… he basically needs an absurdly low HP pool, yet is considered tank-class. Is that really something they wanted to advertise? Basically meant, “we have another character for you to auto-ban. Enjoy!!”
I’ve played against him 3 times so far (don’t have enough IP to buy yet) and slaughtered him every time, of course this is probably because people are new to him. His most annoying skill is Sanguine Pool, and the fact that he can heal himself.
The only time I lost was because of a 2vs3 and the Vlad on my team kept disconnecting (I was 15/4). >.< The guy on the other team said Vlad is weak at first, but tanky late game. I'm excited to try him for myself. ^^
Well i’ve been playing him for like 3 hours now and in my first game i was awfull 1/10 or something. Next game i carry my team to victory 21/1 score. I dont think he’s op but he’s really hard to play sometimes. not matter how much hp you stack, HP without armor= squiyi
@OFM – true! But cleanse doesn’t let you completely dodge targeted attacks.
actually I find him to be very underwhelming, but that is with any champ newly released where no one knows how to use him.
@p3t3or: Nice that you’ve been able to try him, can’t seem to get in tonight. First the logins would lag forever, now I can’t even connect. And I wasn’t even planning on playing SC2 tonight…oh well :).
OK, finally got a chance to play one game with him. Thoughts:
Great at last hitting. Is it just me or is there no time on his projectile on the transfusion?
w+move speed (and maybe rylai + sunfire) is going to amuse me to no end.
His e took me a bit to figure out.
Generally, lots of fun.
The other team surrendered before we even had the 3rd mid turret down, citing “OP new champ”… BUT they had a Vlad too, and he was +2 levels to me after I died twice early (finished like 4/5/6ish).
/shrug
First time I played against vlad was on TT and we got a first blood (2 kills) and rolled from there. Second time was on SR and he dominated. Rylai’s + RoA (seems inefficient since he doesn’t need the mana) + sunfire gave him over 200 AP and over 4000 HP along with his ignore turret form and a fed akali and I lasted all of 2 seconds. The worst part is that the towers effectively do nothing. He seemed fond of flash > q > e > w. Personally I think he needs to move slower in goo form or it needs to be a shorter duration.
We were solidly losing the game at this point so I don’t know how many conclusions to really draw based on it.
Dont you see the pattern?
Riot releases a champ (OP, most of the time)
People (hopefully) buys the champ with RP
Riot nerfs the champ after the ‘buzz’ from the champ has slightly faded.
They have to make their money somehow and I don’t hold it against them as it seems like a great way to make moonies but it surely makes me want to learn how to counter the new champs everytime they make a new one (which is way too often imo)
Right now a Vlad who knows what he’s doing is near unbeatable in solo-mid without a gank. The range of his “Q” combined with it’s zero-cost 400+ damage ranged nuke at a 2 second CD at lvl 9, the possibility of being nuked by all four of his abilities+ignite (and life-stealing invulnerability), the synergy of rylai’s and getting blasting rod/giant’s belt while in mid (and supreme last hitting with the Q)… pretty damn difficult to counter right now. I’ve been playing him a lot, gotten a lot better with him, and looking forward to not HAVING to snag him so that we either have one in a normal game or so that he doesn’t show up on the other team.
[…] may remember Vladimir’s champion spotlight, if only because it was so funny to listen to Phreak tell us just how overpowered Vlad would be. […]