Reign of Gaming

As for warding, I have to disagree with some of the people here. If you are at bronze don't ward for the utility, just ward for yourself. Most people have such bad awareness than they would get ganked even if all enemy champions were permanently revealed.

I would spam retreat pings but if i know someone is going to get ganked.

And once you are safe (either because you have map coverage or you can win 2 vs 1 fights) push hard and go ganking /counterjungling or just farm your jungle. You can easy get double or triple farm this way, and deny enemy team if you are counterjunling / ganking.

Vladimir is hard countered by swain if both go toplane. Swain outtrades, outdps him AND has kill potential just by walking next to him and spaming skills out of cd (lvl6+).The ONLY thing swain needs to do to own vlad in lane is lasthit properly and spam skills whenever vlad comes close to farm.

And of course, skill > counters. But pointing there are no counters because if someone is very good at some champion won't be countered because he knows the matchup is just flat stupid. The other guy countering you can know the machup very well too. Counters means who will win if both players have same skill and get the same jungle presence.

PD: I don't get why you talk about junglers. If you are always 2 vs 1 you are going to lose no matter which matchup are u playing, I think everybody knows that.

In my experience, Irelia can't touch a minion until renek lets her do it

I have around 75% win rate at gold IV-Silver I range with him.

What I like the most of him is he can play rather safe. With ghost+ pool you can scape most ganks, and since you are not melee and you are usually kiting, you are less likely to be fucked by jungler/ mid in the middle of an all in.

And the second advantage he has over other champions is that you can comeback from being behind. If you die to an early gank with jax, you will be zoned until his top decides to roam or your jungler tries to recover the lane. With vlad you can recover against most machups and win latter, asuming you can get the levels and your core (mainly revolver and some defensive items if they can all in you).

For starting items I go cloth+pots vs ad, and pots+ 2 wards vs AP. If I'm the only ap maybe would start with reju+pots+wards, but If not I always go for wota later on, so the reju would be wasted in my case.  The jungler item is really strong on vlad, but I let the revolver there and when we are permagrouped I buy the wota. The AoE dmg of a double ap comp is really really strong.

Note:Consider a doran's shield in your first back if you are against an all-in champ, you gave the first kill or you just want a safer laning.

For the built latter on is pretty flexible. You get revolver and then decide bettween seekers (when laning against AD and NEED the armor) abysal (when you need the early MR, against double ap or just ryze got fed) rilay (when their team is very kitable, your team is very kitable, your team lack cc and/or initiation, your team has an AD hypercarry or just fed and your team is actually able to defend him, when they have a lot of silences and you can't pool before dying, or you are getting ganked a lot and best response is early hp) or haunting guise (when you don't need neither of them and want more early dmg).

Zonya will be built  pretty early in all games, if the game goes long enough (or you are very fed) rabaddon too, abysal at some point if they have an AP, Rilay only in the situations previously explained. Liandrys is core if you feel the need of going rilay for longer slows, but it doesn't have priority over zonya or abysal in most situations.

If they adc is getting fed may be a good idea going for a very bursty build. For you to get an idea, with sorcerers+ DFG+rabaddon+zonya+ abysal+wota with a full combo including ignite you deal 5000 dmg against a 3k HP main target target (pre-resistances). Just remember you need to get to your target and you are not frontline anymore (don't get chain cc'ed and look if someone can tank, please).

Regarding boots you can go for mercs (ONLY against a lot of hard cc or silences, you always need to be able to pool before dying) tabi (against a full ad team, or getting really owned in lane) and sorcerer's / CDR otherwise (I prefer sorcerers).  You have more dps with cdr, but burst is more important. It helps you more when diving or harrasing under tower, when being ganked against a 100% succes ganking setup such as urgot + shaco you burst one and then try to run and in TFs if they die sooner to your burst, they do less dps to your team too. To sum up, I would only go for CDR if im going to go for a peeling build.

For masteries, after having tried almost everything, I go for 21-9-0 against a normal machup and 9-21-0 against all in champions. Runes vs AD I use mpen+hp/lvl+AP/lvl+AP and vs AP I change the AP/lvl for MR/lvl.

About the bonus MS masteries and runes. I played with them s2, but i realised your machups top are:

A. A gap closing melee champion who usually fucks you. Against them you rely on minion agro early on (since mastery changes in dmg reduction you can do this). Latter on you rely on seeker's and/or doran and maybe tabi. You won't run away from they reliably, and more AP/ tankiness is gona be more useful.

B. Some ranged champion. Why you need MS?

C. A non gap closing melee champion who is going to be ooutlaned by you whether you have extra MS or not.

And after laning phase there is no point in getting MS over tankyness/dmg wheter you go for the burst build or the pseudo front line-dps

Just one last thing: remember vladi IS an hypercarry and  very few champions scale harder than him. Is you are losing lane calm down, as long as you don't feed hard and you keep close in farm you can be more useful to your team than their top. Just go for a more defensive build and include rilay's and wota. In the worst scenario, you are a ult+ rilay+wota bot, which is not that bad.

PD: sorry for my typing and my grammar mistakes (i'm sure i've done quite a few).

I would recomend practising lanes with your friends 1 vs 1. About a year ago I was in the same place you are right now, and it was my solution. You can practise without ruining other people's games, and without the fear of being a charge for your team.

Then you will eventually become decent, or maybe just realise you aren't that bad.

Quote from mizary2102 »

well sometimes there are ganks you just cannot avoid by warding. when these ganks come from TF mid or some other enemy laner its the job of the respective lane to prevent these ganks or to use this time to your teams advantage. if its the jungler the same applies. do drag or something. its harder to do in solo q but most teammates will listen to you.

another thing is how you deal with these ganks.you can die and flame your team and lose your lane...this is bad. you can play a champion with good movement and escape all them ganks and make the enemy jungler waste his time. you can bully your lane so hard that an enemy jungle gank wont kill you or you will kill at least one of them.even if you die and dont kill one of them try to keep on famring and stay relevent in the game. freeze the lane or roam to mid. do jungle creeps.

Quote from theedee »

Dying to a good gank is normal business, from Bronze to Diamond. So what is YOUR jungler doing all day long? I hate the games where I get ganked 4 or 5 times with my jungler doing nothing and I loose the lane (you dont even have to die once to loose a lane like this, but not dying once in 5 attempts is unrealistic).

So when they need Urgots Ulti and a camping Shaco to kill you, you did what you can and its up to your Jungler to make it a fair 2v2.

 That's what I was looking for. I thought it, but I wasn't really convinced about that. What I understand is I won't be always safe against some specifical ganks but I have to do my best for demanding a lot of attention and hope my team is able to take benefit from my pressure and get advantage elsewhere.

Quote from xaneius »

reduce your "expose" time! clear quickly the wave and then go bush or river or wolves or golems and so on...

I must admit I didn't think about that silly fact. Problem is with vlad you are half of the time poking them under tower, but is usefull anyway.

And yea, I always take into account awareness about map and jungle routes, but that's not enought.

Ty all the people who coment

Quote from Deliqe »

Couldnt they like tell us about this in a fcking advance. Now ill have to skip work in order to no life these rune pages and society will fall apart because of it. Nice going Riot.

They did . I read it somewhere here in RoG during the last month and I saved IP for the pages because of it.

But yeah, they could make an official announcement in main lol page instead of a hidden one in their forum.

Well, I wasn't talking about a mundo coming from the river or sidebrushes and ganking you, I am talking about ganks which can be performed by a few junglers who come from their nexus to your lane, like in the given example of urgot+shaco. Hecarim, Vi and jarvan can do them post 6 too, and if the laner has some sort of cc / burst, you are done. It's not like you can ward between his 2 towers.

Those are the ganks which I don't know how to manage, the ganks that you cannot prevent just by simply warding some spots and then ignore  jungler's existence.

Hello, silver I player here (I think I deserve a little more, keep climbing). I ask it from a top laner aproach, but I could say the same about bot lane I guess. The fact is I don't know how to manage how some junglers/ junglers + laners gank.

For example, I was vlad and was against an urgot and shaco was the jungler. From time to time urgot ults, shaco q's in from behind, which ended with me dying and sometimes shaco too. I could say the same with someone like hecarim or even TF, who don't care how deep you ward.

I know the "easy" solution is say, don't push. But if I, as vlad, never push i'll lose my lane and/or let the other laner free roam always, and my tower will be down at some point. So I expect "the pros" to shed light on the question

PD: I often pick ghost with vlad (unless there is a jarvan), so I can escape from a lot of ganks, but it isn't always enought and it's not reliable.

I don't understand taric thoughts. He is much weaker than he was in s2, when very few people played him. His stun last almost 40% less time at level 1, his w gives less armor, his awesome base AD was droped for changing his pasive (which is not that great if you are suporting, you have been always running oom pretty fast and now you can't do the nunu stuff for getting it back).

Penetration changes aren't enought in trade for his w nerf. You must remember that ADpen from runes and masteries (% and flat) got nerfed , so early game (where taric is strong according to vox populi) your w does less than it did.

His really only good point is that he is easy to play and that a lot of people in low level don't know how to manage against him. But that's not a new fact, and as I pointed out before, few people played Taric in s2.