if you want both of best worlds get cdr runes and build dfg... and spam a ton of ap items.


who knows, dfg might help your dmg output late game with r.

If you are having issues with health sustain just play passive for 10 seconds and use Q on a few minions. This is assuming that you are laning against some sort of ranged champion that is preventing you from using Q on their face.

Buying a gp10 item is a waste since you can clear creep waves with your eyes closed once you 4 stack E.

I understand the idea for CDR, but without actually running the numbers any statement made about which is better (AP or CDR) is hard to judge.

I just started playing vlad and I have been a fan of buying the spirit visage whenever I am sent to play mid as for relatively cheap is gives + health + MR + CDR and + health gained from heals. All 4 of those are useful stats.

Philo stone on the other hand gives hp and mana regen. Mana regen is useless since you do not use mana so that is a wasted stat. HP regen is useless after early game since it wont make a difference in team fights and you get all the sustain you need from your abilities with WoTA.

Philo stone also suffers because the options you have to build it into something are limited, Shurelya's is nice I guess for the move speed buff, but again the magic and health regen are both wasted stats.

I would say kage and heart of gold are better options. Both will give you more hp and AP (with Vlad's passive), gp/5, and since u get AP, u get a stronger return on his q.

10% CDR on a 5 second cooldown gets you 10% more damage (casts, to be specific) per second.

10% CDR on a 5 year cooldown gets you 10% more damage (casts) per second.

It's actually 11% more damage.

1 / 0.9 = 1.11

No, just no. It's like saying CDR is weaker than AP and spell vamp because CDR offers less sustain and damage than AP and spell vamp... >.>

11% more damage is 0.11 CDR scaling. Compare that to Vlad's AP ratios - 0.6 on Q damage, 0.25 on Q heal, 0.45 on E damage, 0.7 on R damage.

CDR isn't useless, but AP scales better in terms of raw damage.

Raw damage, yes, but as Vlad you don't too particularly care about that. Your spells are somewhat low cooldown to start, and you want to keep using Q and E to recover more health and deal more damage.


In general, for just damage, CDR returns whenever you have an engagement window of a length that would let you cast one or more additional spells than without that CDR. On a 1 second spell comparing max CDR to no CDR, you're looking at windows from 0.6 to 1 second, then from 1.2 seconds on you're always at least one spellcast up on the no-CDR spell version. (The poster spell for this, Lay Waste, doesn't actually want CDR in this case because Karthus' ult CD is stupidly long)

Also, CDR is better as the utility of your spells increases (for instance, on Fizz, CDR is pretty important since his 2 main damage abilities are both mobility ones and you want those up as often as possible) and as your spell cooldowns decrease, since you get access to those "windows of engagement" more easily. On brand, hitting max CDR is pretty desirable as well because at that point you can just spam fireball to stun over and over (~55% stun uptime pre-tenacity).

Lets not forget his passive that allows +health per AP and the other way around.

I would tend to agree that more AP would benefit more to Vlad than with CDR.

CDR is always valuable (assuming you are required to repeat/spam cast in your battle), the one thing i would like to call out is this:

The more abilities with Vlad you spam, the more health you are likely to burn.

With more AP you are getting more damage for the health you are burning.

With Vlad, the burst is low in comparison to other AP champs. You want to be able to sustain longer than your opponent. Thats where Vlad is strong.

Maxing CDR is good in most cases (except for maybe Singed). However, getting AP tends to increase your DPS, and few items offer CDR for Vlad (Boots, DFG) that don't offer a stat that is useless on him.