Talk:Vladimir/@comment-10830961-20130728090741/@comment-5761259-20130827034551

Vlad's abilities are mechanically simple, but in practice, he is dificult to use, and suffers from an increadibly weak early game. However, if you can just farm all game in mid, take wraiths, push to prevent enemy roaming, etc, you will come out of the lane with a significant gold lead, a likely underfarmed enemy mid since most mids struggle to consistantly farm under turret, and lanes who haven't had to deal with a roaming mid lane killing them all the time.

If you just play the poke and farm game instead of trying to trade with people who obviously outdamage you 1v1, then you'll be fine, and even if you do loose trades, you can heal up as long as you don't put yourself in more danger than a q heal is worth.

On the other hand, Vlad is far from OP, he is fairly balanced and is often mistaken as OP for two reasons. 1 No one plays vlad, and as such, no one knows how to play against him. 2 Vlad has an increadible late game. Ever play against a full build Vayne, Trist, or Ryze. You know what terror is, and you probably thought, wow, that's op. But really, they just have a role they perform really well. Late game carry. That's Vlad too. Because of this late game dominance people often give them the misnomyr of OP.