League-of-legends – Why doesn’t Vladimir use Life Steal items

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I'm trying out Vladimir and wondering why I shouldn't be buying Life Steal gear rather than Attack Power or Health.

Most builds I've seen so far focus on:

  • Rylai's Crystal Scepter: 80 AP + 500 HP
  • Rabadon's DeathCap: 140 AP
  • Zhonya's Hourglass: 50 Armor, 100 AP
  • Lich Bane: 80 AP, 350 Mana, 7% Movement Speed

Wouldn't an item like The Bloodthirster (60 Attack Damage, 15% Life Steal) make Vlad's life stealing much more powerful? Or is the difference in that Vlad has no use of Attack Damage since he's a mage?

Or does it have to do with Vlad's Crimson Pact ability: Every 25 points of bonus health gives Vladimir 1 ability power and every 1 point of ability power gives Vladimir 2 bonus health? Which would make those two abilities scale better than Life Steal.

Can anyone explain why the other items are considered better for Vlad?

Best Answer

You mustn't mix up life steal and spell vamp.

Life steal steals on physical damage (meaning auto-attack for vlad). In fights, you very rarely use your auto-attacks to deal big damage because you're a caster.

Spell vamp steals on magical damage (meaning all of his spells), this is want you want if your plan is to steal more life.

  • Zhonya's Hourglass is great because vlad's ult has low range but must be cast in battle engage to hit the most enemies and for the 15% extra magical damage. The two second invulnerability will allow you to stay alive in the heart of the battle if you get targeted.
  • I also very often use Hextech Revolver with Vlad, but you need some AP. It's no use having 50% Spell vamp if you don't deal any damage.

Vlad spells cost life, the good thing about more spell vamp is you can get your life back faster with transfusions minion lines and you can cast life costing spells (specially Tides of Blood that stacks) with less impact on your life.

EDIT : I went to have a quick look at all the different Vlad builds. All (or nearly all) of the descent builds have hextech revolver in them with its evolution to will of the ancients - give more AP, more spell vamp and an aura :-)

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