Tainted Steel first item. Earring regenerates a lot of MP allowing you to stay in lane much longer than usual (360 MP in 2 minutes by the item itself excluding blue buff).Because of this, (Same as a multipot for perspective), you can buy 3 or 4 (4 if you feel like you need to) health pots and sustain much longer with a bigger effective health pool than your opponent before your first back.

Chances are, you’ll have less power than the enemy solo meaning you shouldn’t outclear them, but if you poke them out just as much they do to you when the waves meet and use your extra potions for healing, you’ve done your job forcing them to back before you do as that’s the goal.

By the time you first back (Assuming no early gank onto you or early kills for the enemy solo) you should have enough to buy t2 silver breastplate for Phys and if lucky, possibly fae-blessed hoops for magic solo. Since you’ll be most likely backing after enemy solo due to extra pots and prots from tainted steel, they should only have their starter + t2 item when you back for yours making the power scaling even in builds. Not to mention, they’ll probably be buying a health chalice delaying their first t3 item as well. The 15 MP5 from the earring is imperative since that’s 360 mana in the first two minutes of the game which for most gods at level 4-7 will be 70% of their mana bar.

I throw beat stick in the build after first defense item if you want to be aggressive. If not, build it after second item, but right before caduceus shield for some major damage as 55 power and 15 pen is massively strong especially early game. With people running around spamming soul eater, beatstick + tainted steel will reduce their healing by 55% making soul eater worthless during the laning phase while you still have healing in your kit and massive prot shred with ideally Guan’s boosted 3 (45 Phys/magic prots at rank 5) for extra tankiness. Keep in mind, these two also reduce all healing including the enemy gods HP5 plus from potion spamming and what ever other heals they have.

At level 20 when your starter is upgraded (Do this ASAP), Tainted Breastplate and Beatstick yield 90% Antiheal from you alone and that could be the difference between winning a losing a team fight massively late game.

As for your final item, glad shield (3+ Phys)/ oni hunter (3+ magic) are the two best options imo. The last slot is situational depending on the enemy comp i.e. spectral for multiple crit users or withchblade/midgardian Mail for multiple auto attackers.

For relics, Upgrade tp to heroic tp for extra tankiness going into a fight, and last slot is most likely blink to cover the distance between you and the carry/mid. Beads if they have tons of CC and Upgrade Cursed Ankh to do extra damage in case the enemy team has multiple healers.