Vlad was on sale and I think hes a really cool champion so I picked him up and I was wondering if anyone had some tips for playing him.

I understand he is better bot than top, so what should I start with? What should I build vs. AD or AP bot? What are some good items to get on him?

Spell vamp is awesome on him cause he is all about using and regain health, I always make getting a revolver first priority.

it depends from what ive seen wait before u start buying need to be more tanky stack hp and ur dps will be fine. doing well stack ap and u will be very tanky with very high hp
and pool is the internal trolol of the game remember to doge still shots and turrent dive escape with it
use ur ult as a team fight start makes every one take alot more damage and dont be afraid of being aggressive ur have slot of substain so pure ap isnt bad....

Keep E charged, go heavy Pen. Get tanky.

I like Sorc Boots -> Guise -> Spell Vamp -> If against another AP Abyssal

Vlad's ranges are so short you're going to get the most of out abyssal possible.

don't choose him for Dom, he is only good bot lane and the popular bot laners (diana, nunu, ryze, cassio, urgot, yorick, jayce, jax, maokai etc) pretty much all beat him due to aura reducing healing effects.

I have treid him bot lane and he just does not scale well into late game. You have to build him pretty tanky to stay alive in lane but that makes your damage pretty bad, so many better choices.

Do you think I should get Sweeper or Guise? I prefer Sweeper since it gives 100 more hp plus the CDR and vision. I like to get Spirit Visage so it gives me 20% CDR fairly quickly.

I tried Vlad several times over the course of my dominion days... I couldn't make it work. It always felt weak. Listen to A12MO12. I have never seen a Vlad carry a dominion game.

What about Vlad makes him weaker than other bots? I don't see him that often, but I did see a stream (don't remember who it was) that did well with him bot. He doesn't really need to carry a game to be good.

Here's a seemingly strange and unusual tip - Max E first. The cooldown stays the same the whole time, while the cooldown on Q has to ramp down from like 9 secs to 3 secs. His E hits hard, can hit people he can't see, and will surprise your opponent with how much damage it puts out at early levels. If you want to do this though, you will probably need spell vamp.

There was a short time when Vlad got a huge buff to his E and proceeded to own Dominion for a few weeks, but it was nerfed pretty quickly.

Vlad isn't an awful bot laner, but he's not a particularly good one either.

If you level Q you have great sustain, but terrible wave clearing. Levelling E makes you a wave clearing monster, but you need to rush spell vamp (meaning no CDR, MPen or tankiness). W is a great escape tool, but you'd better be close to your tower or it won't matter.

Then you have his ulti; amazing teamfight nuke, thoroughly mediocre for duels. It might be good if the cooldown was halved.

I mean, you can play Vlad, and if you're really good and enjoy him then you'll do fine. However, there are better choices if you want to win.