On Sunday, NRG Esports and Team SoloMid faced off and we got to watch the most frustrating thing in League of Legends. NRG top-laner Diego "Quas" Ruiz locked in Vladimir and TSM mid-laner Søren "Bjergsen" Bjerg locked in Ryze. They then proceeded to have an awful sustain-battle in the bot-lane.
In the end, Chang-seok "GBM" Lee comes in as Anivia and helps Quas finish off Bjergsen. With Vladimir's sustain and his Sanguine Pool, making him untargetable while his other skills come off cooldown, he's just too hard to kill.
It's worth mentioning that Quas was sporting a Spirit Visage, buffing his spell vamp by 25 percent! Imagine this with Will of the Ancients. Thank God Riot removed that item during the mage rework.
To counter a super-healing Vladimir, you should build a Morellonomicon or Executioner's Calling, depending on your champion. Both of these inflict Grievous wounds, which cut healing down by 40 percent. Keep in mind that Morellonomicon only inflicts Grievous Wounds when the target is at 40 percent health or below. Taking Ignite as a summoner spell against him is also extremely effective, but not recommended if you're not going to actually use it on him. (We all know that one player who Ignites everything that moves past them.)
Or, you know, Riot could just balance him a bit more and maybe we wouldn't have this problem. Just sayin'.