Talk:Vladimir/@comment-25364408-20141226120533

Am I the only one who believes he has an amazing early game? A lot of people keep saying that Vlad's early game is terrible, but I find the contrary to be true. Not only is his late game insane, but his early game completely wrecks many champs up top. Heck, I've gotten level 3 double kills multiple times because the jungler decided to gank me as soon as he got done with red/blue, and the enemy top laner decided to join them. It could just be because I run a rune loadout that pretty much only I would use (percent health seals and quints, scaling CDR glyphs, and MPen marks), but even then, they're designed for lategame, with the MPen marks thrown in for a tiny bit of early game power. Heck, because I'm working on multiple rune pages at a time and have only 393 hours logged in League, 2 of the percent health seals and all of the percent health quints are T1.

The only problem with him, maybe due to the way I play him, is that once he starts getting behind, the he can't even try to stop them from throwing him in a hole, nor climb out of one. The inverse is also true about him for me, once he throws the enemy into a hole, they are never getting out of it.

Additionally, and people will probably disagree with me here, but I actually like a Doran's RING start to a shield/Amp Tome start. Pots for all choices, of course. A ring, with my runes and 21/9 runes, gets me 28 AP + 733 health. A tome gets me 32 AP + 675 health. A shield gets me 12 AP + 733 health. The difference between a tome start and a ring start isn't much in terms of AP, but a lot in terms of health. The shield start is meh, because it only gives 2 AP more than without an item, but the same health as a ring.

The damage difference between a ring and a tome for level 1, assuming you start Q like a normal person, is only 2, with the heal being only a difference of 1. Sure, the passives are lost, but the damage and heal difference between a ring and tome isn't enough for me to lose out on the much larger health boost the ring gives. You may argue that it saves time getting a WoTA if you get a tome, but that's never a problem for me.