Question about skill leveling

Hello everyone,

I know that skill leveling and in what order you level skills probably varies from God to God, match to match, and situation to situation, but I wanted to ask if anyone could give me some general guidelines or help in this area.

With some classes I do okay as far as which skills to level and when. Other times however, I feel like maybe I'm not doing so well at it.

As an example, the other day I was playing Thanatos in Joust. When looking at his skills, I had a few thoughts which were confusing.

1. Should I level his number one a good bit at the expense of others because of the high damage and the heal, and the ability to 'poke' at the enemy God's better early game?

2. Should I level his number two for extra penetration and good movement speed to maybe escape quicker if need be?

3. Early game, the general consensus seems to always be to farm minions, in which case, his number three seems best for the AoE effect?

Basically, all in all, should you lean more toward favoring one skill over others until it's leveled a good bit/completely? Or should you go more the 'balance' approach and level them up more or less evenly?

Any help or advice is greatly appreciated and thank you very much for your time.

Pretty much for every god, you want to make sure you put a point in your ultimate when you can. For the most part, there's a "main" skill which will be your bread and butter. For mages it is usually used as a wave clear early game and is their main damage output late game other than their ultimates. These include Crush, Whirlpool, Whirlwind, and Celestial Beam. Some kits are a bit more complex but have the same basic idea.

In Thanatos' instance, you want to prioritize your skill ordering in this order.

1. Hovering Death
2. Death Scythe
3. Soul Reap
4. Scent of Death

Your ultimate threshold and damage scales nicely so this will be your first priority. Death Scythe has the same base damage as Soul Reap but scales better and heals you while Soul Reap silences the enemy. Which is better? You can try it out and find out 9/10 times that you are dependent on that first ability. You need it to stay in a fight and will give you the most damage out of any of your abilities.

Skipping points is something you can do to get more points into 1 skill more quickly. However, you will be at a slight disadvantage for a short while (until you level up again) since you basically don't put a point in anything so you can put a point in your ultimate and your main damage ability skill. (levels 4 and 8)

Basically to answer your question, yes. You'll always want to prioritize one skill over another in a god's kit. Spreading out your skill points isn't as effective simply because not all your abilities are the same in damage, control, cost, cooldown, etc. There's too many factors to just say I'm just gonna go 1,2,3,4,5,1,2,etc.

I hope I answered your question!

Thank you very much! Yes, this was a very informative and helpful answer!