Starting items

Start cull for galio and kassadin, basically no one else. They aren't going to one shot you early anyways.

Seal is for squishy teams and champs like veigar/viktor who aren't going to one shot you early.

D ring is for best stats early on. Buy against assassins and any hard lane.

Core items

Proto is legit broken. 50% movement speed is disgusting, the rockets count towards procking phase rush, I'm pretty sure it can be used in pool, its broken. I buy this item 90% of games.

Night harvester doesnt really impress me that much. Enemies will run away from you. Buy this item if your team has a lot of cc, it will help you follow up and deal tons of dmg. Synergizes with dark harvest well.

Riftmaker sounds fun because of the omnivamp, but this item really works if their team has 4+tanks. Buy void staff to have 60% armor pen, pretty strong.

Other items

You will buy deathcap in most of your games. Gives you tons of health with your passive, very strong.

Void staff for tanky teams. 40% magic pen is mind bogglingly strong. A lot of times it will outdamage deathcap despite being close to half the cost.

Spirit visage is not optimal. You can build it if MR is necessary or if no one is buying healing reduction, but building damage is just so strong this season.

Cosmic drive for MS and ability haste, strong second/third item.

Lich bane is a little troll but the 10% MS is really good, and you will find some time to space an auto eventually. Good last item if you dont need to buy anything else.

Demonic embrace for tanks.

Hourglass for ad/tons of CC. Seekers is more broken than ever before.

BAN WORTHY CHAMPS!!!:

Kassadin - Champ is just simply more broken than you. He beats you in the 1v1 at level 6, and he outscales you much harder. If you have a ganking jungler make him camp mid via IRL death threats. Solo killing him once is not enough. Make his day horrible and spam auto him pre 6. His q outranges yours so he will get a shield before you can damage him.

Ryze - Scales as hard as you, but he outranges you early. You can one shot him mid-late, but he is such a headache. Borderline unplayable if the guy knows how to space you. Ryze will perma clear waves and then ult bot lane, get a double kill, and you will get spam pinged for 15 straight seconds because it is somehow your fault.

Neeko - Not a popular pick but so strong. Stand away from your minions so that she can't get her root empower on you. You dont have the mobility or the cooldowns to handle all her cringe poke. She is hard to gank and has twice your range. You one shot her late game. Take phase rush and scale.

Orianna - Not worth banning but super cringe nonetheless. Start d shield and try to live.

Elite500's matchup sheet where he runs down all matchups in detail: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AyoJmZ0diiVYeIF4IjlO9yfc-4BijZT8hmx7ZEjX1LQ/edit#gid=1976957217

Early Game:

For most matchups, your early game actually is not that ****. Your puddle is disgusting and tilting, you have hella sustain, and you can start a ton of different items. Try to keep the wave close to you unless you could feasibly fight the enemy laner. You can get fkd by ganks. When ganked or engaged on, prock phase rush with e+q+puddle or something like that and bolt away. Farm up and rush keystone item. Other vlad players might start d cap and a bunch of fiendish codexes. While that build makes sense, the utility and skirmish power of an early protobelt is super busted.

Mid Game:

This is after you get your protobelt. Focus on continuing to farm and snatching jungle camps from your bitchass jungler. This is where you truly embody the leech and suck blood from everything. Side laning at this point is busted because you can easily 1v1 everything besides fed bruisers, but it is also effective to phase rush away from anyone that tries to match you. You are pretty good in teamfights at this point, so help your team with objectives and skirmishes whenever it makes sense. If you can win a midgame teamfight, late game is pretty guaranteed.

Late Game:

At this point, one team fight can decide the game. You can now play the game similarly to a fed assassin. Look for flanks and massive ults. Use protobelt to get in the middle of teamfights with a big ult and kill their team. If you get an ult on to at least 2 squishy carries/supports, you just win the team fight. Be willing to channel e and then go into puddle/flash into the middle of their team. Your ult+e will do 3/4 of squishy health bars. Just thinking about late game vlad excites me. Dont int and get chain cc'd and you win every late game fight.

Vladimir Q - Blood Suck

Vladimir's bread and butter. While you have big empowered Q, you are god. At this point in lane, you zone enemies hard out of fear of losing a quarter of their health point and click. Try to keep your bar half full so that you are only ever one Q away from big Q. This doesn't apply early game, where you just spam Q on every minion. Big Q healing is reduced by like 60% on minions, but not on jg camps. Ward over the wall into chickens and use big Q over the wall to get a quarter of your health back with no counterplay.

Vladimir W - Puddle

Pretty simple. 2.5 seconds of being untargetable and slowing people above you. Broken ability. Can be used to prock phase rush, it is so easy on this champ. Save it for big CC, it makes tower diving easy.

Vladimir E - Koolaid Splash

This is where most of your damage comes from. Channel it for 80% ap scaling, gross. While channeling it, mind game your opponents so that they cant hide behind minions and block it. Channel and then go into puddle to deal a million damage without being targetable. Use it for waveclear early but dont spam it. Your q cant keep up with all of the health it costs to cast it over and over.

Vladimir R - R

Cast it early and make sure you have your W to survive the 4 second timer so you can get your entire health bar back. Hit as many people as possible. Deal damage during those 4 seconds because your ult makes them take 10% bonus damage. Simple ability

The "combos" smh

The standard combo is (channel e) - (Flash at max dmg e) - (Ult) - (Big Q) - (Ignite) - (Puddle away). Everyone knows and expects this combo. The only way you get a kill with it is if a) They underestimate the damage, or b) They have a smooth brain. The combo you should prefer because it is unexpected is (Flash) - (Ult) - (Q) - (ignite) - (Charge E + Puddle) - (Run at them and release max E with phase rush). They are just boned, although you have to puddle sooner, so you might be more likely to die. There aren't really combos because your abilities don't interact with each other the same way an akali's or a syndra's would. Just do as much damage as possible in the shortest amount of time possible in the safest way possible. Dont grief and you one shot everything.