Rakan's laning phase sucks

As a support main-ish, I love . But his laning phase is a lot worse than most supports I've played in League. The support assassiny gameplay style is a nice addition to League, but it's early game & late game isn't cut out to what I'd hope for.

• First off, even though he's marked as ranged, there's little to much use of a 300 auto-attack range in which he can utilize it with or
  Plus, he has little use to even build as his auto's are marked as ranged.

• His poke relies on either landing his Grand Entrance (W) then dashing back to your allies with Battle Dance (E) in close proximity while occasionally using your Gleaming Quill (Q) to poke for a small amount of damage early on. Combo example: W - Q - Auto - E

• His initiation is also easily telegraphed, as his W can be disrupted for a whole second by cc or avoided by moving slightly away from his AoE knockup, giving his enemy laners a brief chance to heavily punish him in his attempts to dash back toward his allies. Even when you have your ult. it can only be really utilized in teamfights where you can charm the entire enemy team, but if the enemy carry is smart enough, they'll stay back and burst you down before you have the chance to charm the first person.

• His heal, if you would call it that, scales off of AP, along with his kit as well. So, unless your really far ahead, your not going to be building any sort of AP items, with the exception of But even then, you won't be healing or damaging as much as a or that builds AP items. His build revolves around mostly being a utility/tank support.

• Speaking of scaling, his AP ratio's aren't as good as most AP supports: and even

• Lastly, as a utility/tank support, he feels very squishy. Now, his playstyle does revolve around being a sort of support assassin, as he gets in the backline of an enemy team to disrupt, then dash out for his team to followup. But he feels so weak to utilize items like and sometimes But, it's probably me just being sucky with builds and not utilizing them at the right opportunities.

I think Riot has done a fantastic job with playstyle, but the execution of it might need a tad more buffing with his base stats or changing some of his ratios for his shields/heals to scale better with AP or even off of HP maybe. I don't quite know for sure.

Any feedback, tips on laning phase or any critique on this thread would be much appreciated.

Have a great day everyone!

Edit 1* - Format