A way to fix Essence Reaver- Back to the Roots

Greetings! I'd like to talk about one of the least used items in the game: The Essence Reaver. According to lolking, this item is picked less than 1 time in 100 games, so i think it's safe to say that something's wrong with that item.

Let's have a look at it's stats:

Price: 3200 Gold 80 attack damage = 2880 Gold 10% life steal = 550 Gold 10% cooldown reduction = 317 Gold Total Stat Value = 3747

Cost efficiency: 117,1%

Essence Reaver is cost efficient by itself.

The problem is that it gets outclassed by the Bloodthirster at the moment. Why? Because the Bloodthirster scales better (higher lifesteal that scales with the multiplication-marksman-build + shield)

Personally i think that the Essence Reaver, considering it's passive should be an earlygame/midgame-item when manaissues really matter. So i dont see a reason why it should compete for the 80AD-BF-Sword-Slot. Like many others before mentioned, the manaregen comes too late to be usefull enough to warrant it's weakness against the Bloodthirster.

The most ironic part is that riot thought the same at first. Those are pretweak-Reavers livestats:

Price: 2650 50 attack damage = 2160 +10% life steal =550 gold +10% cooldown reduction = 317 gold Total stat value: 3027 gold

Cost efficiency: 114%

As i said before, through the nature of its passive, Essence Reaver should be an inexpensive item. Well, here we are. Maybe reduce its price by 50-100 gold then it's fine. This is an item that gives you an earlier powerspike than your opponent's. It's stats are almost identical to the more expensive version, BUT YOU GET THE MANAPASSIVE 2 KILLS EARLIER. The drawback is a less efficient itemslot lategame but isnt this what riot wants to enforce?

Strategic diversity?

In the current state, ER is only used by Blue-Ezreal, and it's not even core in that build.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on that matter, it's odd that this item stayed so long in its awkward position.