Reminder Renekton Is Still Too Weak

47% winrate - 49% if you take IGNITE on an "EARLY GAME CHAMP". Lol - the only reason he's an early game champ is because after that, he's less than useless if not fed. Calling him an early game champ when he can barely win a 1v1 early game - and loses many matchups early even when played correctly while still not outscaling such an opponent - is a joke. Does fiora or jax - when played correctly mid/late game - win a duel by a single auto attack or two? No. Do they lose the duel for mis-timing or missing a single ability? No. If they get a nice kushy margin mid/late game, then early game champs need an equally kushy margin early game.

I do not understand why early game champs get nerfed for DOING THEIR JOB properly early game or else scaling champs get their early game buffed to the point then don't get bullied without majorly screwing up while they still keep their scaling, yet nothing is done for the early game champ to make them scale better in compensation for essentially losing their early bully potential.

Side example: taric vs leona. Leona is strong early, but arguably by the time of the last leona nefs, taric did just as good a job early and definitely outscales leona in durability and teamfight value, yet leona is not allowed to be stronger early game because then she can win early and snowball? If you are going to gut her ability to punish people when she's supposed to be at her strongest so others can compete, then the same needs to be done by gutting taric's op late game compared to leona's. The survivability he gives his team while nearly matching leona's cc potential and being more tanky than her is absurd. If leona isn't allowed to have such a strong advantage early, then neither should taric mid/late game. This is an example to highlight the same flawed thinking of the balance team in toplane for much of the past season and this preseason.

Renekton is SUPPOSED to be an early game BULLY - much like leona. Their teamfight and dueling/2v2 value is supposed to decrease (compared to scaling champs) mid/late game - especially if they don't have a lead. With the nerfs to leona, taric is just as good early and much better mid/late, so why would you ever pick leona instead other than for liking her better as a champ? Answer... you wouldn't. On a similar note, too many other champs have...

1. gotten buffs
2. make better use of runes
3. exploited high base damages combined with increased strength of early game resistances (after tank rework) vs opponents without reliable armor pen

This has caused renekton to not be able to take winning trades vs certain tanks early on... ornn being a prime example... due to insanely high base damage, high sustain from their kit and/or grasp (hi maokai), and them being able to negate insane amounts of damage just by building armor because it takes a million years to finish cleaver - laning phase is probably at least half over by the time the item is completed unless someone is snowballing. And against fighters/duelists/bruisers? Jax is much stronger with pta because he can proc it while being invulnerable to an opponent's damage thanks to counterstrike... and the extra damage it gives him after proccing it allows him to easily trade equally (with only aa's) compared to your burst from electrocute after you can finally deal damage to him because his counterstrike ended. I"m not saying you can't win vs him - I'm saying it's absurdly more difficult to do so than it should be considering he's a scaling champ who is supposed to be WEAK early game while renekton is supposed to be STRONG early game. Fiora is another prime example of a champ with too much early power considering how ridiculously strong she is as a duelist mid/late game. The fact that she scales so hard and yet can even THINK about winning early without even really having to outplay is absurd. As I've said before, I'll say again... her riposte SHOULD NOT be able to be activated DURING the part of renekton's w (2 aa's; 3 if empowered). If she's already being hit by the first part of a 2 aa stun, she should be STUNNED and not able to use riposte. She should have to use SKILL and press it BEFORE being stunned. If she presses it BEFORE being hit by the FIRST aa of renekton's stun, she should riposte it; if not, she shouldn't, but currently still does. Fix this - it would go a long way.

I could go into paragraph upon paragraph dissecting everything about different matchups; however, this post is already becoming tl;dr so I won't bother. Instead, I will suggest some simple changes to renekton that would not break him but make him a champ that scales more reasonably and/or gives him back the early power he USED to have and is SUPPOSED to have. I do not want or expect that ALL of these buffs should be given to him. I'd expect maybe one or TWO of them to be used and that should be sufficient without making him broken. I suggest several different options because there's different ways he can be fixed to be competitive and viable again... mostly looking at either his early game (restoring him as a proper lane bully) or scaling (making his scaling less pathetic compared to nearly every other toplaner in the game).

1. Change q damage scaling to TOTAL ad while keeping ratio the same - this would buff scaling and slightly increase base damage of q when building titanic hydra and sterak's combo. Currently renekton only makes use of sterak's ad via his w and aa's - and we all know renekton is a CASTER - so he isn't designed to deal most of his damage with aa's.
2. Give scaling stun duration on his w - currently his stun duration is short compared to many other champs and doesn't scale it's duration at all; unlike some other champs. This would help him scale into mid/late game without breaking him early because he maxes w last.
3. Fix/buff e hitbox. Several times I've dashed, dealt damage to a minion or champ and not been given 2nd dash. Also, it has an extremely small hitbox and an unreasonably long cd mid/late game compared to other champ's abilities. So first off, the ability needs to be fixed to properly give 2nd dash and secondly it should either get a shorter cd mid/late game (when maxed) or at least/alternatively be given a longer distance comparable to flash. Again, this is looking mostly to give him better scaling, but would also help those occasional times where you can't quite catch someone who flashed away from you to finish them off in lane.
4. Better armor pen. His 2nd proc of e WHEN EMPOWERED is his only armor pen before he completes an armor pen item. Cleaver takes way too long to complete to properly be able to bully early. Give some base armor pen to both proc's of e when empowered and to 2nd proc even when not empowered. Or move armor pen elsewhere in his kit.
5. Give armor and mr buff to his ult. Something like 20/40/80 armor and 10/20/40 mr. This wouldn't break the bank because it would only be active during his ult - giving opponents plenty of openings to duels/teamfight him. It would help him at all points of the game - making all-in's lvl 6+ safer but still not impossible for his opponents to outplay or escape AND give him better scaling for teamfights.
6. Give him a better passive. His passive honestly takes too long to stack for how little it's reward is. About 1.5x damage on a basic ability and some minor buff to the damage/duration/healing of the ability. Either let it stack faster and NOT fall off when out of combat (like shyv stacking up for her ult; she doesn't lose ability to ult just because she's out of combat for 4 sec) or give a second/better passive. Perhaps some lethality for stacking up fury since renekton is hurting in the ability to cut through opponent's armor until he completes cleaver. Not much early - maybe 5 and 10 at 50 and 100 fury, but scaling into the game perhaps at ult ranks (lvl 6, 11, 16)... with 5/10/15; 10/20/30 lethality given for having 50; 100 fury.

Renekton is currently a champ who neither bullies most matchups early, nor scales well into the game. Early game is mostly a toss-up at best unless the renekton player is much more skilled than his/her opponent, with mid/late game renekton being outscaled by nearly any other toplaner. The reason for this is his kit and the scaling on his abilities. He must either commit very heavily to damage to be comparably relevant to other damage toplaners and other roles or he must commit entirely to building tank after cleaver. If he does the former, he becomes as squishy as an adc, without having the benefit of an adc's high movespeed (from crit or lethality) and range. If he does the latter, his damage is negligible; allowing a squishy enemy team to ignore him the whole fight while killing off his team even as renekton stands toe-to-toe with an enemy adc or midlaner and trades damage with them. In seasons past when renekton was in a good spot, he could remain respectably tanky (more durable than an adc for sure) while still building damage. Even if he built tanky after cleaver, he dealt enough damage that the other team couldn't ignore him getting in their adc or milaner's face. He bullied much more in the early game, allowing him to have a much more reasonable chance of snowballing and ending before being outscaled. The changes I propose - not to use all, but some of them - would give back some of that early bully potential and also make him a scale more respectably without making him an unstoppable 1v1 or teamfighting monster at any point of the game. If you aren't going to let champs like renekton or leona have their early game snowball and bully potential to the extend they used to AND ARE INTENDED TO have, then you must introduce better scaling to them while still allowing them some minor early advantages (since they still don't scale as well as others; just not as unreasonably poorly). If late game scaling champs like fiora, jax, or taric get to have it both ways (be strong early and highly outscale), then early game champs deserve to have it both ways too (be stronger than opponents early and scale MUCH better than they currently do).