User blog comment:Willbachbakal/(Champion Rework) Vladimir, the Crimson Reaper/@comment-26307842-20150413063837/@comment-1330314-20150413073148

I buffed Vlad's health and health growth specifically so that he wouldn't be squishy (he'd have some of the highest base health in the game), and I'm incentivizing him to build tanky via the health scaling to his healing, so at no point would he be truly fragile. My issue with his current passive is that it just gives him free stats in a manner that isn't rich in gameplay or even decision-making: building tanky makes you deal more damage, and building damage makes you tankier, so no matter what you choose you inevitably end up with a mix of tanky DPS, instead of being able to specialize more towards damage or tankiness with every item purchase. I think Vlad should be more high-risk in general, hence making his healing less free, but I also think he deserves to have even stronger healing than what he has now in the right circumstances.

I also don't really think Vlad has that much counterplay: if you're even or ahead of him, you can force him to back off by diving him, but if he gets ahead it's impossible to get in range without him consistently out-trading you. His free infinite sustain also doesn't carry that much decision-making, and basically means Vlad gets to survive in lane just by hanging back and playing passively. Perhaps giving him skillshots shouldn't be the first step to take, but he definitely needs to have a degree of unreliability to his Q and E, as those parts of his kit seriously lack depth.