League of Legends: An Interview with Elite500 – Best Vladimir in the World
By Alexej Vogel
League of Legends. Photo courtesy of Riot Games.
Hard stuck in Diamond 1
Initially, Calvin was not a Vladimir main at all, in fact, he preferred to main the likes of Yasuo or Riven, though, being hard stuck in Diamond 1 made him question one of his duos how he managed to climb the ladder.
"“He said I should play more Vladimir, so I spammed him a few games and even managed to get Masters for the first time in my life […]. At first, I hated the rework because you could not build just full damage anymore but over time I just made my playstyle THE Vlad playstyle, this has happened since the spellbook era.”"
Different Ways to play Vladimir
Watching a lot of his videos it did not take much time to realize that there are many ways to perform well with Vladimir. Although there are of course certain meta builds and rune pages, I asked him to name his favorite off-meta set:
"“[My favorite rune page] is Conqueror with CDR, most effective is rushing CDR with Phaserush […].”"
He also mentioned his guides on Reddit and YouTube.
Hard matchups for Vladimir
After watching a significant amount of videos, I wondered when this champ actually has difficulty getting going or even loses the lane completely. Since Vladimir can be flexed into both mid and top (and bot but do not play that) I asked for both.
"I do not really play top much but I hate going against Ryze [who can be flexed there]. Orianna and Kassadin [are hard to play against] in the midlane. In a perfect world, Ryze or Orianna will never take any damage while [damaging] Vladimir."
Since Orianna is rarely seen nowadays, I questioned why this matchup can be such a hard one.
"She outranges Vlads tiny range and can push [him] out of the lane as long as she has mana, dealing damage to her is also nearly impossible as Vladimir’s DPS is really low early game, all the while she has empowered auto attacks and can shield the small burst [he] has."
Well, she is not called “Queen of the mid lane” for nothing.