Hey, recently, when winning and already have an abadons deathcap and athenes unholy grail I like to grab hextech gunblade. I usually do this with brand, and was wondering if its a bad idea or if there are better items to grab, considering this is a bit of an unorthodox pick for an ap mid.

I like having spell vamp and lifesteal, with my w taking out 3+ minions at a time its like having a mini health potion, and when split pushing its nice to always be at full capacity. I also really like its slow and 300 magic damage, its like having another spell and allows me to slow a tank so I can get to the enemy carries. I have also been trying to animation cancel a bit to get in more attack damage, so hextech helps with that as well.

Hextech gunblade is a situational item. You really only want to get this when your champion uses both auto attacks and spells to damage consistently, and needs the sustain. Brand's auto attacks do little to nothing, and while the spell vamp is nice, you might as well get a will of the ancients for that, and the slow's range is too small for you to make use.

Hextech is taken on champs such as Akali; she requires both AP and AD, and benefits greatly from both the lifesteal and spell vamp to survive with her melee burst style of play.

will of ancients has the same percent of spell vamp and same ap, but the cash difference is significant. The slows range is great against tanks, who try to get in melee range of me, and let me outmaneuver them if they try to harass me.

Is there a better set of items that allows me to achieve similar results? I don`t like rylais because I don`t notice the slow and the health doesn`t matter much in teamfights, but I like lifesteal and spellvamp so I can recover to max by farming.

are you talking about the hextech revolver?? which is a component that builds into the gunblade or will of the ancients

having the revolver on AP champs is fine, as it's one of the few items that gives spellvamp, but the gunblade you would only want on champs that use both AP & AD in their abilities; Jax, Akali, Katarina

those are about the only 3 in the whole roster that i would think of getting it on, the rest can get by with the revolver or wota...the gunblade is also very expensive, so it might not even be worth finishing when there are other items you might get more benefit from

Im assuming you are actually talking about the gunblade (Made from hextech revolver + the cutlass) The revolver itself is a fantastic item for burst champions (imo) but teh gunblade is bad unless ur champion is a hybrid like akali. After gettign the revolver you really should upgrade it to WOTA (Will of the ancients), for most apc, for an extra ap aura whcih is espcially useful if u have another ap champion on your team (Amumu, Singed, Nidalee, ect.)

Gunblade is really expensive for an AP carry to consider buying, so many wasted stats...

Really though, positioning is what you need to work on, not trying to find an item that lets you ignore it.

I'd say that there are several, more viable items for an APC that would work better for positioning screws than Gunblade. All that thing has is lifesteal and spellvamp which shouldnt be keeping you from getting blown up in a teamfight if you are out of position. Zhonya's is by far the better 'I blew my positioning' item and really anything else that makes you tankier in one way or another (Abyssal, Grail, Rylai's, RoA) should trump a bit of spellvamp and/or lifesteal.

All that said Gunblade really doesnt have much that I would want as an APC. The AP gain is marginal and there are better spellvamp options out there. I'm not an AD of any sort so the AD doesnt really interest me and I've got no attack speed or crit to make the lifesteal worth the time. I suppose the active is nice but I cant really see it changing a teamfight.

In general, revolver itself is somewhat deprecated for sustain right now on mana-using AP carries because Catalyst the Protector tends to give superior sustain and protection against burst in situations where you're having to deal with heavy harass; you typically only see revolver built on manaless mages for that reason.

It's not that gunblade is in itself a bad item, it's that you're spending a lot of gold on a relatively small gain; in general, an early Rod of Ages would accomplish much the same thing while making you significantly tankier in teamfights, and the short range of the active makes it far less useful to a ranged champion since you can only use it to disengage. Gunblade is built on mages with additional AD scaling, short ranges, and high burst - you tend to see it on Akali, Katarina, Mordekaiser, etc.