Alternative ways to frame this question:
What is it supposed to do in an ideal situation? Why should I buy it? (if never- why should I have bought it when it was in meta?)
Question brought up by the recent discussions over Steraks Gage. That is, it seems like GA is just a piss poor version of it for ADCs. Was GA actually designed to be an anti-burst item?
GA is just an item that scales with positioning. If you have poor positioning you'll die, it will proc, and you will die again. If you have good positioning it can turn disadvantageous battles into small wins.
The key is knowing when to use it's resurrection effect, and to use it on your own terms. If you have a team that can quickly reposition to make sure no burst enemies can take you down as you resurrect it's about the best defensive item you can take on an ADC.
Steraks Gage, on the other hand, prevents you from dying in the first place. It's better if you find less than half of your team to be reliable.
At the end stages of the game when you have a bunch of gold and nothing to spend it on, however, you should probably use both. Use GA until you get the resurrection effect, then swap it out for Steraks while the res is on cooldown. Once that timer is done you swap back.
GA offers some pretty crappy stats for an adc when the resurrection is on cooldown, after all.
I find GA to be extremely good this season. As the game goes later and later, the death timers get insane. So if 2+ ppl on ur team have a GA in a team fight around 40+ mins, it could be the difference you need to win or take control of the game.
I grab a GA when I'm ahead so it makes it really hard for the enemy to kill me for bounty gold or to get ahead. Also, if you're fed, two lives makes you a really deadly target.
I think the only real option to use it is when you're a major factor in the teamfights as an assassin or ADC, and a good chunk of your team's gold. Like, you can fight them and if you play right, you win. If you play wrong, you lose. So you get a GA as insurance, because then while you're reviving the enemy team has to choose to either blow all their cooldowns on your team and hope they kill your team so they can single you out, but possibly just blowing everything they could've used against you, or save cooldowns for you and possibly throw the fight against the rest of your team.
GA once was meant as the standalone def-item for priority targets, giving good def vs tanks(most tanks have no %pen, but %health damage, so def stats help well vs them), and the revive if they should get bursted down. Ideally, you'd get it vs talon and lough as his combo just pops the GA and he when dies to your team and you revive, cleaning up the fight.
The problem is that it snowballs really hard. If you are ahead(as a team), it makes it really hard to shut one down, as it works as intendet: opponents throw nearly all they have on the priority target, it 'dies', the team push the opponents away and punish them for their commitment, and then you revive and clean up. If you(as a team) are behind, you die, the oppsing team will force your team away, and then you revive and instantly die again.
In S1/2, it was the go to item for adc, but after that people slowly started to notice that not getting bursted down in the first place is actually better than the snowbally revive...and currently the best option to not get bursted is steraks, hence they take it.
It also is usefull as a endgame winning option. If it's 6items each, get GA on every single member for the final fight, your opponents will have trouble keeping you dead, though only the fewest games last that long.
