Early Game
Level 1 to 5
With both play-styles, you want to play as safe as humanly possible with Vladimir pre level 6, try to manage the wave so it’s always near your tower so you can’t get ganked and are easily able to last hit. 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 only using auto attacks. These early auto attacks 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 quick 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 Vladimir really hard to play in high elo is players will freeze the wave as soon as it starts to push towards 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 the lane, going Teleport yourself with Phase Rush of course halfway counters this awful spot to be in.
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 slow push 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 an Amplifying 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 to 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 one shot you? Literally no counterplay other than going Barrier or buying HP / MR.
Managing the Wave
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 slow pushes 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 the tower.
Like this, we can freely scale up to the late-game 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 to get your minions under the 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 set up a recall so you can either buy a Hextech Alternator if you are going Setup 1 or a Fiendish Codex if you are going Setup 2.
How do we do this?
We already know how to stack waves and crash them under the enemy tower, so we simply perform 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 the lane while you get to recall and only lose 1-2 melees.
If you don’t want to lock your lane opponent in the lane or they have Teleport 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.
Against 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 **** and ball torture session, especially with Orianna. That’s why if you can recall with 1000g you can get a Fiendish Codex and they’ll just feel awful buying a ******** Sapphire 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 Vladimir's 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 **** their pants and ping where did he go? Which takes the focus from other players and makes them play accordingly.
