Wow. Sorry, only a few hours of sleep and my mind is hopped up on caffeine. Trying to improve the guide, failing horribly. XD

Alright, thanks for the heads up.

Sorry about the Cleanse bit, my mind skipped for a second and flipped back into pre-Season 1.

Spirit, Soul, once again you'll have to forgive my lack of sleep right now, hah. I was comparing against Haunting Guise, a similarly priced item, in my guide. It is also an early game item. I'm just showing how it helps deal more damage as well as heals more than Soul Visage. Although Visage also scales with healing later into the game, magic penetration also scales with your damage later in the game, maintaining this balance. Both of them have every single stat as useful.

A lot of champions seem underwhelming. I don't claim Vladimir as being the best. I LOVE his skills concept and how it all interacts, especially with the costs. I feel he is a brilliant champion by Riot, but not an overpowered one who will compete with Annie for best caster. I don't find him useless, though.

for cooldown reduction, any other items aside from spirit visage? omen seems like it would be useful, nice health regen, moderate health boost and armor boost. The passive wont be as useful since you dont stack armor and risists too much but it could be used directly after sanguine pool to give them another couple seconds of slowing.

Sadly, Randuin's is the only other CDR item which doesn't include some kind of mana. Against a physical heavy team, I'd use it.

Can't think of any CDR items other than Spirit Visage (since all the other ones give you tons of wasted MP5), but if you want a defensive item, FoN looks like a great choice since it allows you to spam your skills more.

so right now a build i would be thinking about would be:
hunting guise
boots (scorcerers by default but situation dependant)
Rylai's
Spirit Visage
Zahonyas
then i would go either Omen if they are melee heavy, and for more CDR, or abyssal scepter if they are magic heave (AP for damage and more health, MR for defense vrs casters and 20 more magic pen, that's 68 magic pen if you have sorc boots, hunting guise, scepter and red magic pen runes).

Agreed yet again. Spirit Visage is an amazing item, but only if you have the damage (and in turn healing) to noticeably increase the healing received from abilities.

Let's assume a level 5 Vlad with Transfusion 3 (160 + 60% of your AP in damage). We are only going to compare the damage and healing of this ability with either of the two items:

HG = +200 HP (200/22 = +9 AP), +25 AP (25*2.5 = +63 HP), +20 MP
= 263 HP, 34 AP, 20 MP

Spirit Visage = 20% bonus healing

Transfusion w/ HG = 160 + 20.4 ~= 180 damage before MR, healing for 45.
Transfusion w/ SV = 160 damage before MR, healing for 48 (160*.25*1.2) health.

You do 20 less damage and gain 3 more health per cast assuming the enemy has no resistances. Throw in some MR and HG's MP and you will definitely heal more with the HG than with the SV. You do lose regen and MR, meaning you rely more heavily on lifestealing for survival early on, but the damage is too important this early on.