Umm
That's not even counting the extra stats she gets out of her passive and the active which is a big fucking deal, not a single stat is wasted and she makes so much out of the reset passive on the item's active. Gunblade gives her a massive power spike in damage thanks to the extra burst she gets from all the stats and active, dueling power thanks to all the sustain she gets and lets her postpone or ignore completely Rylai's thanks to the active. There's hardly anything inefficient about it, specially when the item has an amazing build path for Akali with components that range from 360 to 1400 gold and help her laning a fuckton, and once she gets nerfed next patch she'll need the lifesteal/spell vamp more than ever.
Also I find it hilarious that you use diamond players as an argument but completely diss challenger players building her in solo Q because of some bizarre competitive prejudice.
Key word being "mains." Challenger players in the earlier list like Alex Ich or Voyboy use her on a whim barring Westrice, so I wouldn't give two shits about what they had to say about a champion they're not
that comfortable with. Gunblade "massive" power spike isn't as high as some of the other damage-oriented items she could be getting, the active slow (even with her ability to refresh it quickly) is more or less accomplished through Rylai's with other more worthwhile benefits, Hextech Revolver is all the additional spellvamp she needs (with matching runes / masteries) to surpass the sustain of most champions... Including Warwick and Yorick, funnily enough. 128% gold efficiency might be alright in its and the game's current state, but that's still a huge deduction compared to its previous iteration (where it offered ridiculous bang for buck) without really providing a noteworthy edge over other available options in her build path.
There's also something to be said about every other hybrid champion ditching it in favor of alternatives and functioning perfectly fine (if not better), despite having more skills that could utilize Gunblade's mixed statistics or with a higher % AD bonus than Akali. Do you really want an assassin like Akali to be spending a 1600 fucking gold on AD for one skill and her passive, as opposed to melting people more rapidly and cutting down the time she spends on an important target before moving on to the next with more AP?
I just checked nearly all the diamond akali players. All have gunblade in their games.
If you want even more proof, here's a EUW Master tier player who has 800 games this season on akali. All of his games, he went gunblade.
http://www.lolking.net/summoner/euw/21605738#matches
Are you seriously going to argue you have more game knowledge than a master player?
Everyone has their bad habits. I'm pigheaded, that guy buys Gunblade. I take issue with a bad habit seizing to be a bad habit because it happens to be popular, especially in a MOBA game (with rampant sheep mentality) where there's
always room for improvement regardless of one's skill level.
