Essence Reaver: Needs changes to improve it and differentiate it more from Bloodthirster

Essence Reaver is an item I rarely see, except when you've got an Ezreal, Urgot, or Jayce. Terrible build path, not so great stats for cost, and it tries (and fails) to compete with Bloodthirster as an 80 AD sustain weapon. I question why it was even designed to attempt to compete with BT, when BT is clearly superior at lifesteal. It just ends up becoming redundant.

As a result, I'd like to see the following happen to Essence Reaver:

• Remove the lifesteal component entirely.
• Replace the lifesteal with flat armor penetration (i.e. 20 ArPen).
• Adjust the recipe to include Brutalizer instead of Vampiric Scepter.

#How does this help?

Essence Reaver is supposed to be an AD caster weapon, right? Well, most AD casters are assassins (or otherwise don't need mana at all), and assassins prefer flat armor penetration so they can kill squishies more easily. However, since Black Cleaver was reworked, there are now only two completed items that are sources of flat ArPen: Youmuu's Ghostblade, and Enchant Warrior. And since Enchant Warrior requires Smite, that really leaves only one option that is always available: Ghostblade. This kinda sucks for Talon, Pantheon, Kha'Zix, etc.

Second is that you get better parts of the stats earlier than with Vamp Scepter/BFS: you get the CDR and part of the armor penetration as you're building the item. However, you don't get the Mana Leech effect until it's complete, as Mana Leech is something Riot doesn't want to make available via a "stop-gap item" like Brutalizer because it'd make Talon and friends obnoxious. But still, Brutalizer would at least make the build path less of a pain.

Lastly, it makes Essence Reaver more distinct by no longer having it compete in a lifesteal role with Bloodthirster (since BT always wins anyways). "CHOICES!"

Bottom line, Riot should change up Essence Reaver by removing its lifesteal and replacing it with some flat ArPen.