I have no idea how to face Vladimir - every time I face him I lose.
I normally play as Ashe, Corki, Lulu, or Brand, if that makes a difference.
The trouble I have is that he turret dives so well thanks to his pool. Is there anything I can do to counter this?
To specifically counter Vladimir you should choose a champion with some or all of the following tools in their kit:
By selecting a champion with two or more of these tools you will be able to pressure Vladimir into using his pool which uses a considerable amount of his health. By pressuring him early and often you will deny him farm which delay his very strong late game presence.
I main as an AP player in around 2k ELO, so I've had my share of Vladimirs past 2 years!
Laning vs. him: Vladimir is actually rather weak early game due to the fact that his Q (Transfusion) is on a high cooldown and doesn't heal for much. If you're playing offensive AP champs who are strong early (Cassiopeia, Ryze, Ziggs, Kennen) you can punish him by going aggressive. Also make sure you exploit his short range on his Q.
Playing vs. him during teamfights/in general: Since he is a short-ranged caster, you can avoid most of his damage with good positioning; make sure you stay behind your tanks. Also, if he's really fed you can go for Quicksilver Sash to cleanse his ultimate off, which shuts down a lot of his damage. Heal's debuff helps a lot too, since he has quite a lot of sustain, so make sure to grab that, or at least try to make sure the AP on your team has it.
Hopefully that helped, good luck!
I main Vlad so I tend to see what counters work the best. The best kind of counters are reduced healing put on him. Fizz's passive or greivous wounds are especially strong when it comes to laning sustain against him. His early game is truly his biggest weakness and he is not very apt at dealing with cc or champs with high mobility. I recommend you just don't let him lane harass, out aggress early and play it smart. Engage after he q's because he doesn't have anything to mitigate a counter attack for 4-5 seconds even when he is higher levels.
Vlad has a lot of exploitable weaknesses, and as always, a good jungler counters everything he does.
To counter Vladimir and his sustained laning phase, you will have to have Ignite with you, which is mandatory. After this you have to choose carefully who you pick against him... He is countered by some champs, such as Malzahar, Kog'Maw and Gangplank.
If you are stuck with any other champion against him, all you can do in the laning phase is carefully freeze your lane at your tower and hope for the best... I hope you will find this helpful in the future.
To counter Vladimir you need a champion with burst damage and CC. Brand should be a good choice against him cause of his burst. However, if your problem is his tower diving and his pool, I would suggest a hero with crowd control to stop him. See the link below for more info.
I got all this info from http://www.lolpro.com/guides/vladimir/71-vladimir-guide-top-lane/tips-tricks-synergies-and-counters It's a good site if you want to know builds or counters.
Grievous Wounds is a plus if you can make use of it (e.g. Morellonomicon). Since his Q (Transfusion) has a fairly long CD in the early levels, when Vlad uses it you should try to harass him during this time so he doesn't use it on you. Remember that he has no mana and his character revolves around sustain so you need to either counter his sustain or burst him down. Successful early harassment can easily zone Vlad out and prevent him from sustaining in lane. Don't try to just simply trade blows with him.
A standard 1v1 combo using Vlad is to R (Hemoplague), Ignite, Q, E (Tides of Blood), W (Sanguine Pool) if needed, and followed by Q and E. Vlad's R boosts all incoming damages so that's the first thing to avoid. While using W, certain abilities do still affect him such as existing DoT or certain CC (e.g. Veigar's Event Horizon). His E is easily avoided and pay attention to how many stacks (max of 4) Vlad has as it boosts his damage and sustain; late game it's usually fairly trivial to keep it at max stacks as Vlad can easily recover the HP used to cast the ability. Try to bait out his W so you can effectively dive him as the CD is fairly long.
