Counter Guide

How to Beat Vladimir

Matchup Guide · Evergreen · 3 Counter Picks

Vladimir loses the first fifteen minutes of every game he plays, and it almost never matters, because nothing you did to him in them is still there.

He's the clearest scaling champion in the game, and he's built so that punishing him is difficult in a very specific way: the punishment doesn't stick. He pays for his spells with health rather than mana, takes it straight back off the wave, and steps out of the one moment where you finally had him. So the entire matchup is a question of whether the advantage you built survives contact with a champion designed to erase advantages. The tools that do that stop him leaving and stop him healing (they aren't the ones that hurt him most).

Matchup Snapshot Vladimir, the Crimson Reaper

Where You Meet Him Mid lane, and top

Damage Type Magic, all of it at close range

Why He Is Frustrating Nothing you do to him stays done

Mobility None, except the one moment he needs it

Biggest Threat Sanguine Pool [W]

Hardest Counter Hwei

What a Counter Needs

Grievous Wounds, bought early and not as an afterthought
Something that stops him leaving the fight he is losing
A reason for the game not to reach the point where he is the strongest thing on the map

Patch 26.18 Matchup Data

Who Beats Vladimir on Patch 26.18

Best Picks Into Vladimir

Hwei645 games57.0%
Malzahar1,294 games55.3%
Nasus506 games53.8%
Ekko780 games53.0%
Zoe454 games52.2%

Picks Vladimir Beats

Mel529 games40.1%
Akali1,167 games45.0%
Qiyana430 games45.4%
Kassadin503 games45.7%

Win rates are for the champion listed, in the mid lane against Vladimir. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patch 26.18, Silver and above, 34,515 Vladimir games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed.

Vladimir Overview

Strengths: What Makes Him Dangerous

He undoes a lane you won. Every point of poke you land is refunded off the next few minions, so a lane advantage has to be converted into something permanent or it evaporates.
He has no resource to run out of. Trading him down doesn't put a limit on anything. He can keep casting for as long as he's willing to be low, and being low costs him nothing.
Sanguine Pool [W] deletes the moment you had him. It's not a dash and it doesn't have to be aimed. It simply removes him from the part of the fight where he was going to die.
He's the best late game mage in a team fight. Nothing about the way he does damage requires him to be safe first, and by the fourth item there's no way to make him unsafe either.
Hemoplague [R] makes everyone else better too. It works as a multiplier on his whole team arriving at the same time, which is why fights around him snowball rather than trade.

Weaknesses: Where You Get In

The first several levels are genuinely bad for him. He has almost no damage, no crowd control and no way to stop somebody standing on top of him. It's a long window and, for some reason, most people don't use it.
Healing reduction hurts him more than any other champion. The sustain is the kit. Cutting it in half is closer to removing a spell than to shaving a number.
He has no crowd control at all. He can't peel for himself, stop a dive or hold anyone still, so he's entirely dependent on his team for the early game.
The pool is a single cooldown. It's available once per fight and it's short. A team that makes him use it, then commits a second later, is fighting a champion with no escape.
He has to come close to do anything. Every part of his damage is delivered at short range, so a lane that can hurt him from further away hurts him for free.

Countering Vladimir

Based on the strengths and weaknesses above, beating Vladimir comes down to champions who can accomplish at least one of the following:

Buy the Grievous Wounds component in lane, well before the third item. This is the single highest value purchase anybody makes against him, and buying it late is the most common way a winning lane turns into a lost game.
Bait the pool before you commit. It's one cooldown. Force it with the cheap part of your damage, then spend the expensive part on the several seconds where he can't leave.
Convert the early lead into the map. The reward is towers, dragons and the enemy jungle rather than kills on him, because those are the things still on the board at thirty minutes.
Fight before he has items, and after that only with a plan. A team that keeps taking scrappy fights into the late game is playing into the one part of the game he was built for.

If you're already locked into the matchup without any of those tools, these strategies still work:

Playing a Bad Vladimir Matchup

Play for the wave rather than for trades. He'll win a long exchange whatever happens, but he can't answer a lane that gets shoved into his tower repeatedly while somebody else takes something on the map.

Ask the jungler to come before level six rather than after. He has nothing to survive a gank with until the pool exists, and after it exists a gank is mostly a way to donate a summoner spell.

Save any hard crowd control your team has for the moment after the pool. Everything he does in a team fight is close range and unprotected, and the only thing standing between him and being killed instantly is those few seconds of being somewhere else (the pool again).

Best Vladimir Counters

Each pick below handles a champion who erases what you did to him in its own way: it stops him leaving, beats him before the scaling arrives, or never lets him near enough to start.

Malzahar Stops The Escape

The suppression takes away the ability to press anything at all (the one thing that has ever reliably beaten the pool), and it doesn't need to be timed against a reaction.

The lane is comfortable on top of that. Vladimir can't punish a champion who clears from range and has a shield waiting for the only aggressive thing he can do.

Ekko Beats The Scaling

Three hits set off his passive and Phase Dive [E] decides when those hits start, so the trade is short and over before Vladimir has had time to heal any of it. That pattern is at its strongest in the levels before Vladimir has items, which is exactly when Vladimir can least afford it.

Chronobreak [R] means the pool isn't the last word either. When Vladimir sinks out of the burst, Ekko can just rewind to where he stood four seconds ago and heal back what the fight cost him, and then go and do the same thing in another lane.

Hwei Never Lets Him Close

Hwei has spells that land from 1,900 units away (the lightning bolt reaches that far), and Vladimir's reach barely clears 600. There's nothing between those two numbers he can use to close the distance except walking.

The pool doesn't save him from it. Sanguine Pool [W] lasts two seconds, and Hwei's fear and root are both still waiting when he comes back up.

Itemizing Against Vladimir

The first two are the matchup and the last two are ordinary insurance:

Oblivion Orb is the most important item anybody buys in this matchup and it should be bought in lane, because it goes straight at the healing. Morellonomicon finishes the same idea and keeps it applied through a team fight rather than through one trade. Mercury's Treads make the list only because he's almost always standing next to somebody who does have crowd control, and being caught is how you end up inside his range in the first place. Kaenic Rookern is the answer to a champion whose damage is entirely magic with nothing mixed in, so a single resistance item is unusually efficient against him.