Revert skarner rework

That was his problem.

There is a clarification to make here. I wasn't intending to write or say that Skarner was weak with a fullgame build. I know he was very strong with a full item build. His problem is actually getting to the full item build (that is what I meant by "scaling into"), and your item builds are basically designed to screw him over on that. I'll to that more specifically later.

Few laners get a heal and a shield in the same kit, and he got heavy stickiness to go with it, basically letting him choose his trades as long as he didn't face oppressive burst, which mostly has been plucked from the overbearing mess it was back in the day.

A few things. First off, burst trading is still just as prevalent nowdays as it ever was. However, two other things have majorly increased in top lane: range, and mobility. Neither are things Skarner reacts well to in the laning phase. Both prevent him from getting the extended trades he needed to survive. Skarner never had to deal with something like Jayce or Gnar, all of whom crush him.

Tear is an item meant to hold a champion until the endgame.

That's a misunderstanding of the item. Tear is built on champions who don't need to put themselves at trading risk to enable ranged waveclear to make up for early game weakness. That is why, as players have gotten better at the game, the key consensus is that tear should never be built on any melee champion. Hell, we even abandoned it on Singed back when he had his mana passive because we realized how much it gimped him.

Mana regen was all that Skarners ever whined about,

Of course they did. The entire reason for the whining was that it was a problem that you couldn't viably itemize out of. You couldn't viably build tear or rush other mana items, because it gimped you too much.

I'm starting to wonder if you even know what his old passive was? It was nowhere near early game potent.

Exactly! You couldn't double-down on early game weakness on a champion who can't farm without risk! It's atrociously bad.

Manaflow band has 2 parts. The second part is plenty effective on anybody who spams their skills, even if a long cooldown. Also, it wasn't his Q people whined about, it was his supposedly lofty E.

The second part only really helps when you're low enough that you can't take an extended trade anyway, so it's not earning him that much. The first part is the important bit, and it has two problems. First, the Q is likely to consume it if it pops when Skarner is farming or fighting, which is not always something he can control. Having a low-cost ability that you have to use contantly while fighting does significantly incrase the risk of wasting it. Second, his E's mana cost wasn't that high per-cast (it was 55-70). However, when you took into account how often you had to cast it to get real healing, and the effectively low cooldown that it had, its total mana drain was quite high. That does make it worse for manaflow band, because that works better off of very high individual cast-costs.

Again, it wouldn't be bad, but it does have to be balanced against mastery-based regeneration at the time, and it's not that much better.

Every jungler did g/10, and the reason he did it the most was because it let him get his early Sheen, farm passively and quickly while ganking

Again, sheen was not a early item in his jungle build in high level play. It didn't provide enough threat against laners given the level and gold disparity he was assured to have. People in high level play put off sheen until third item after boots AT LEAST. Sheen rushes weren't a part of jungle play, and weren't part of his top play either.

I also forgot that Chalice of Harmony was an extremely efficient buy back then, and Athene's was also highly effective back then

And yet, despite how stupidly overpowered Athene's was, nobody built it on Skarner in any high level games.

Yeah, they [ap builds] were. They were your best shot in top, with all of your skills stacking quickly, heal, shield, Q damage... The works.

Again, no they weren't. The build was too focused on damage without good-enough scaling, was way too vulnerable to getting burst down during the early kiting phase of fights due to lack of real resistances, and didn't offer enough durability for him to use his high sticking power. It was a trolly snowball-reliant build only, not one you could count on.

I'm really going to sum this up in one way: I don't think you were very familiar with high-level choices that Skarner players made, and I really think you have rose-tinted glasses about mediocre builds. You remind me a bit of a friend of mine who played AD Lissandra up to gold around when she released. He could eloquently defend why he did it, but it was still bad. His success with it said more about him than about the champion, and your success with AP Skarner says more about you than about Skarner.

I just really don't think you have a correct perception of the weaknesses of the builds you are espousing.

With that wrapped up, let's deal with one last point.

However, Redemption has been a staple of Skarner's after one of his reworks, and who can blame them with the regen it provides?

Staple? He didn't even build it that often in the 6.22 - 7.1 phase when the item was stupidly OP, let alone recently. Rightous Glory would be a better example of a staple Skarner item that has mana.

and tiamat was not a noob trap, remember this was before titanic hydra.

I know it was before titanic hydra, and that's the entire reason why it was a noob trap. The actual tiamat itself required an investment of 1,900, and that was for 40 ad and 100% hp regen. Neither of those are things Skarner needed, and it was expensive for those stats. Additionally, given that Skarner would not build much other AD, the active and passive both did relatively little damage, on an item giving him almost nothing but damage. Finally, its only upgrade was ravenous hydra, which provided more stats Skarner did not want. If titanic had been an option, it might have been decent.

There is a reason why nobody in any high level game ever bought that item. They knew better than you.

not truly a big difference.

If you don't think a 2.5 second difference matters, then you have fundamental game understanding issues. It is extremely important.

You miss your e you really cant do anything before guess what hit any 3 things spells or basics

Except that you wouldn't have closed the gap anyway if you didn't hit the E, so you're making a moot point.

take him back to when his e healed and take him top lane

Again, something no one actually did. Do you remember that the most popular and highest winrate builds both skipped the E? That's damn important. The real reason to return him to that time would be the permaslow, which was a much more defining aspect of his character than the heal ever was.

Here's a better option: rework Skarner from the ground up, and forget entirely about all of his past reworks.