Renekton in pro play (pre 7.9 patch)

So we all know renekton falls off late game. He lacks the tankiness of a true tank even when building the same items. He lacks the sustained damage to out-duel bruisers and fighters while being unable to simply burst them out like he does in the early game. If we look at how hard it is for renekton to gain a significant advantage 1v1 or 2v2 early game despite being a bully and compare it to how hard other champs can bully mid and late game, it seems like renekton actually has less bully potential/has to outplay more than many other champs such as fiora. Yeah early game renekton wins hands down, but if he messes up more than a tiny amount, he can lose to fiora early. *Just sticking with fiora as a concrete example to illustrate a point here - nothing more. Compare this to mid-late game. Fiora can mess up majorly without facing any kill threat from the renekton. If fiora just plays safely early, renekton can't 1v1 gain a big enough advantage to really snowball. But the renekton cannot say the same mid-late game. When you compare how one-sided the matchups can be and how easy/hard it is to get a snowball-sized meaningful advantage, it isn't even close unless one champ is getting help from the jungle and the other side is not. Does this mean renekton needs either a buff to early game to have "fiora late game" level bully and snowball potential or that he needs a better mid-late game?

Secondary thoughts - about pro renekton builds Personally I hate the cleaver into titanic rush on renekton. It makes your defensive stats pure hp, your titanic primarily buffs damage to targets behind the main target - which rarely happens where there are enemy champs close enough to get hit by the aoe of this. By the time you get your first resistance item, the enemy tank has 2 resistance items unless you snowballed hard. I would much prefer to either see renekton rush resistance items 2nd and 3rd if he is even or behind (give comparable tankiness to opponent tank). If ahead, build blade of the ruined king. Why? Sure you miss the 450hp from titanic; however, you gain MUCH stronger split push and bully potential. You have %hp damage and LIFESTEAL to infinitely shove in and bully 1v1. You can chunk enemies out bit by bit with repeated poke-dives under tower before committing to the dive that will kill them. As for teamfights, what you lack in the hp from titanic, you make up for in damage potential. Empowered w giving you approximately 24% of a champ's current hp before factoring in resistances plus the raw damage from w. If you have flash and dash up with 50+ fury, you can basically delete a carry with the most minimal of followup from a teammate even if the enemy rushes to chain cc and exhaust you. If you are even or behind, you can build bork 4th - after your 2 resistance items. It really just enables renekton to win the split push longer - even against bruisers or fighters who outscale him. He has a much stronger chance to outplay them mid-late game than he does with titanic. And as we're all able to see in pro play, the 450hp from titanic doesn't really do much late game anyways. So why not make yourself a much stronger damage threat and live up to renekton's purpose. As someone beautifully explained once when comparing renekton to nautilus: renekton wants to dive the backline to kill the enemy carries; nautilus wants to dive the enemy backline to peel and disrupt the enemy carries.

Obviously with 7.9 sterak's, ga, death's dance, and whatnot all this changes to some extent. There appears to be 2 core builds for renekton now - a tankier one with gargoyle or a damage and lifesteal heavy one with sterak's and death's dance.