Talk:Vladimir/@comment-4530717-20120118140810/@comment-71.174.228.56-20120118203306

His abysmal early game was the more glaring problem. Maybe an improved early game will let Vlad farm into a better late game too. If they also gave late game buffs it might have been too much. Time will tell, and they can buff late game as needed.

On the other hand, I'm not sure late game falloff is much worse than the falloff all AP casters feel.

The passive nerf is probably to address the problems they had balancing him. His buff should allow him to scale very well since he can squeeze more stats out of the same items than other AP casters can. That kind of scaling could become OP especially if the better early game allows better farming.