No survivability? What about attacking super fast due to the armlet and healing yourself for 61% of all damage dealt? What about literally coming back from the dead? The armor is a slight issue but a simple Medallion of Courage fixes that and helps your mana. If you're looking at a late game situation, just grab an AC.
The biggest issue with Leoric is his survivability. Sure, you may be attack fast, but without BKB, you'll easily get locked down. You may come back to life, sure, but their CC might be off cooldown. To stack onto that, if theri carry is doing better, he'll win by far.
If you're against most carries, they will have a Diffusal Blade, making it so you may end up losing all your mana to reincarnate.
Think about the build for a moment with what you say;
Boots of your Choice
Armlet
Vlads
Satanic
Heart
BKB or AC
You'll be lacking a ton of armor if you build BKB, but you'll be lacking armor. If you build AC, you have more armor, but the lack of ability to fight, guaranteed, due to CC. You'll have health, and damage, but if you aren't full prepared for a teamfight, you'll just get destroyed. That's why I'm saying give Vlads to somebody else. It doesn't benefit Leoric, it would work better on somebody else. Lifesteal isn't the best orb to give him really either, since he already has his own built in lifesteal that scales quite well with damage.
Basically I'm saying there are 2 unnecessary items because they aren't very beneficial to him compared to other items. To stack onto that, some items just might be better overall against a certain team.
It could be used as a "fun" build, but I don't see that much power in it either way besides getting life back from a hit. The thing is, you need to build to be ready to hit, so you'll be needing to spend maybe even more time away from your team, which just isn't as good. It's too problematic.