Vladimir has been a hot topic of discussion since release. Even today, when I rarely see him picked, there are still forum threads on a near daily basis wondering when he’ll be buffed, when he’ll return to viability, why he isn’t viable now, and so on. I know CC is all the rage these days, especially when it comes to AP carries, so where is Vlad’s place?
I still occasionally see Vlad do well when his team has enough crowd control to make up for his own shortcomings. He has to be careful, though. Against a strong AP with a stun, Vlad is susceptible to ganks, despite his pool. If he can be forced to burn his Flash early, Vlad’s health costs work against him early, leaving him open for ganks.
As many Rioters have pointed out, many of the solutions to Vlad’s problems are problems in themselves. Fixing health costs may improve his early game, but give him more damage or survivability and we could be rushing back toward the old days of Vlad.
For now, it looks like Vlad fans will have to settle for a legendary skin. Honestly, I can’t say I’ll mind seeing Vlad in a few games sometime soon. Sure beats Morgana.
Though today is just barely slower than yesterday in terms of work and moving responsibilities, I can’t hold back on my patch impressions any longer. Yesterday’s patch had some sweeping impact on the state of the game. Urgot brings another new skill type to the game with his swap, but maybe more importantly, both Heimerdinger and Shaco caught significant nerfs – nerfs that could drop them off most players’ ban lists.
I’ll put together a complete Urgot review a bit later today, but for now I’ll say that he seems to have been designed as an Ezreal counter. The stun/swap combo means Arcane Shift only takes Ezreal back to the front of the battle, instead of outside harm’s way. He’s also extremely mana efficient as he harasses, so it’s easy to see him taking mid against a lot of the squishier carries.
The Heimerdinger and Shaco nerfs will be getting a dedicated post as well because they are so big. Riot has always said that it would trickle nerf, but in my mind they should have considered both toons for significant remake if they were planning to nerf this hard.
On to the less significant changes. Kog’Maw caught a rework to his Caustic Spittle, which now provides passive attack speed bonus in addition to the armor penetration active. Kennen also got most of the proposed changes. He now gains armor and magic resistance while in Lightning Rush, Maelstrom can hit more people, and Surge got an AP buff. In my mind it makes him highly desirable. Vladimir was only half nerfed – his Transfusion has a slightly smaller range but his Tides of Blood is larger.
Malphite also got some nice changes. He should be more mana efficient, and his Brutal Strikes now also grants bonus armor, synergizing with Ground Slam and providing some nice staying power, especially in the jungle. Lastly, Soraka got a small tweak in that her Infuse provides half mana to the target and half to her (Soraka gets the full amount on self-casts). Mana cost on her heal has also been marginally increased.
The last change that is actually very cool is that elixirs can be purchased when you have six full slots and will auto-activate. No more selling and repurchasing items.
That’s about it for the patch. The other posts I mentioned here will be up in short order (especially now that the servers are set to ‘busy’).
