2011-05-19, 10:59 PM
>Pineapple' Wrote:Not once have I seen someone seriously play vlad by stacking revolvers and actually carry with it.
I haven't bothered to notice Revolver stacking Vlads until you guys brought it up.
Having now noticed it, the Vlad on my team that got the pentakill stacked revolvers, Sorc Boots, and Mejai's. He basically single-handedly forced the other team to give up after a 45 minute game. His IGN was Manvir. In terms of difficulty, me and an old irl friend (whom we used to 5-man rank with other irl friends; gone are those days) were duo-queuing, and we have decent elos to show for it. He knows his shyt, and he knows it well, and the same goes for me.
There was also another Vlad that stacked Revolvers that generally did well, named MegaGigaByteSon. Not exactly stellar, but he did his job. BobChican and WillDaSnail were in that game.
What happens in these cases is that Vladimir gets a stronger early game (his peak annoyance is roughly around level 9, with minimum CD Qs), which means several things in his case:
1.) He can farm well.
2.) He denies the other opponent exp and gold.
3.) He punishes his opponent's mistakes harder than usual. (it's not a good idea to go into an exchange with him, unless you are priming him for death fairly soon, or you can get away with it without getting damaged)
4.) Gankers have a hard time ganking him cause of trololo pool. It's such a fking easy get-out-of-jail card.
5.) Snowballing opportunities for the rest of his team if Vlad happened to be matched against the other team's carry.
To make up for his inherent lifesteal abilities, Vlad's damage goes into suck mode. Where he really shines, and high elo has recognized this as a basis for why you choose Vlad, is his ultimate. With good team coordination, Vlad drops his ult, team fight ensues, the other team cries for mercy. That's a lot of bonus damage!
I think maybe the reason why I haven't seen high elo run Vlad these days is because he's ineffective by himself, and his range is short. Maybe the numbers worked out in a 1v1 put Vlad in favor, but the bigger picture is that he's not likely to secure kills early game. He also doesn't absolutely roflstomp low-mid elo teams due to his bad damage. Mid-high elo however still sees people doing mistakes, while team coordination is a known and practiced concept, which gives competent Vlads the best conditions to succeed and carry the team.
Some of this is just speculation on my part though, so don't think too deeply into this. Riot devs have the majority picture though, so I trust they know what they're doing.