Joust high lifesteal and damage

I know it also helps with quicker ability use in general, to me that was obvious but the bigger point of that to me is being able to secure kills with your ult more often. Outside of your ult, which if you time and target well you can handle kills on your own, in a Joust match using regular abilities, you'll be relying a lot on your teammates to also protect you and help set up kills. So, on a 1 to 1 consideration, Chronos to me means more ults being the most important thing.

As for you saying you can clear minions much faster, I would say that in most situations, you won't be the only one putting in effort to clear the wave. From your argument, it sounds like your teammates aren't touching the wave at all, and you need the CDR to get a second round of wave-clear effort in. That shouldn't be the case. But I'm okay with you arguing you just like the early CDR. That's preference in many ways.

(As an aside, that early, once you get Chronos, the CDR on your abilities is no way 5 seconds, and will never be even with full 40% CDR, which you don't directly get. After Chronos' is built, the best your CDR will be is around 7.5 seconds. You'd have to have Plague of Locusts or Grasping Hands maxed (but it won't be both that early), and that 11 seconds would be 8.8 second CDR without the Chronos passive tick, or 7.4 seconds with the tick. Guessing you were just exaggerating on the 5 second claim.)

Bancroft CAN make up for Shoes in a way. Yes, you can hold your ground easier and stay in a fight, but mobility is a thing in other ways. You can move in a bit more quickly to get a couple extra units distance for your abilities. You can dodge enemy attacks a bit better. You can get to the buff camps more quickly, contest and push or retreat from those. If things go south and you're the target, you have a better chance of retreating. And if you need to back, you'll get back from the fountain more quickly. And Shoes are cheap with good stats for the cost. Lots of function.

As for Spear of Magus and Spear of Desolation, I'm going to make an assumption. I'm guessing the CDR from Deso is easily apparent to you in terms of noticeable effect. You don't get any direct feedback from Magus, because it's just dealing with % damage, which is very difficult to judge differences. So you're probably working on simple perception of an item's effect, rather than knowing the underlying numbers and working the system.

CDR is great. It's functional. But a lot of gameplay is also optimizing your engage moments. CDR is only working for you when you're casting it right off CD. Every second you don't use it when it's available, the CDR is being wasted. Of course, there may be multiple instances during a match where you might use it immediately. But just pointing out, if you can optimize your effectiveness without having to focus as much on CDR, you'll be a bit better off in the long run. You've got the mana buff which temporarily gives you 10%. You've got the Potion of Magical Might which also temporarily gives you 10%. And Chronos' Pendant, by itself, is almost enough CDR when you factor in the passive. And so, I'm not saying Chronos is a bad choice. I just think it's a better choice later in the build.

Guaranteed, Magus is the better actual item. It has significantly more pen (both straight pen AND protection reduction), and against a squishy god with all of Anubis' abilities doing ticking damage, you'll be dealing true damage, which is WAY different than dealing with an enemy that still has 20 protections after your Deso's and Magi's 25 combined flat pen. And against tanky gods, it'll also be significantly higher damage.

The other part you probably don't consider is when you have a magical teammate. If you've got a Guardian with you, your protection reduction effect from Magus will also allow THEM to deal more damage, due to how protection reduction works vs. pen.

Hey theiving. Just wanted to point out that smitefire handles comments in a somehwat strange way. Oldest comment threads are at the bottom, as you can see by the date/time stamp.