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Shoes of the Magi
Divine Ruin
Gem of Isolation
Chronos' Pendant
Rod of Tahuti
Obsidian Shard
Polynomicon
Charon's Coin
Spear of the Magus
Blink Rune
Shoes of the Magi
Gem of Isolation
Chronos' Pendant
Obsidian Shard
Charon's Coin
Rod of Tahuti
Purification Beads
Bracer of Radiance
Shoes of the Magi
Chronos' Pendant
Spear of the Magus
Gem of Isolation
Bancroft's Talon
Rod of Tahuti
Purification Beads
Shoes of the Magi
Divine Ruin
Chronos' Pendant
Gem of Isolation
Obsidian Shard
Rod of Tahuti
Bancroft's Talon to Spear of the Magus, and Rod of Tahuti to Obsidian Shard if you want.
Change Bancroft's Talon to Spear of the Magus, and
Rod of Tahuti to Obsidian Shard if you want.
Chronos' Pendant
Mana Potion
Divine Ruin
Shoes of the Magi
Bancroft's Talon
Gem of Isolation
Rod of Tahuti
Y
B
A
X
Tap each threat level to view Merlin’s threats
Basis instructions for play Merlin is not the presence of items, but an aggressive/safe style of play. You can buy many different other items, but your damage anytime will be the same. With good play-style you can have no items, but you will be top dmg :)
I tried to buy different combinations of items, but I think:
Chronos' Pendant 2nd not give me good burst. But need get it anyway as 2 or 3 item.
Spear of the Magus 2nd - we will be always without mana. Take Spear of the Magus if you want be more useful for team (not take, if yours team as 3 phys like warrior, adc, assassin + weak mage). You can replace with it 
Shaman's Ring or Obsidian Shard. Or replace Divine Ruin in main build if enemy heave weak heal.
Best 2nd I think - Gem of Isolation. He early helped your team kill same enemy's and they get more trouble to escape from 
Eclipse.
You can buy Shaman's Ring as 4 item it's can give you more average dmg. Now most teams play with more than 2 fat gods with good magic def, so I get Obsidian Shard most time.
Bancroft's Talon good in assault as 3rd item after 1st Chronos' Pendant and 2nd Divine Ruin.
I never take defensive items. They no need.
Vs. one player blink to him and use:
(
Blizzard + 
Frostbolt) + Elemental Mastery (change to arcane ) + ( Eclipse + 
Vortex)
(or change to fire) (
Dragonfire+
Radiate)
vs. group players save Flicker and use him for escape after combo. You need maximize 1-st and 2-nd skill, ignore ultimate. Usually fire stance not really good. Radiate good vs. only one enemy, arcane skills more universal vs. several enemy's.
In long game sometimes useful change arcane skill order ( Eclipse + Vortex as Vortex + Eclipse). People get used to the usual skill order and make mistakes if it is changed. They bypass the Vortex (this skill usually missed), but get to the center Eclipse after.
You main team damage dealer - not use arcane combo in single target before main battle. Single target have 90% chance escape from Arcane combo and in main battle you do nothing. Use frost skills to them and change to Arcane when main battle start. After battle change to Fire and try kill low HP targets. You need initiate main battle (if your team have cowards xD) - look for good enemy group and use arcane combo in full HP targets. If you want get some kills - wait when good team will do all the work for you and you can kill targets with less than 50% HP (not recommended).
Success of your actions - true Flicker use and quick use combo between Flicker on cool-down. Flicker is an incredibly effective skill - you can escaped Hercules's 
Driving Strike before he hit you... need only good reaction... Except skills that block movement - 
Siphon Darkness, 
Whirlpool, 
Entangling Vines - they a some problem.
PROS:
Merlin will be nerfed in next patch... Now he is top dpm (damage per minutes) and gpm (gold per minutes) among all my heroes...
Upd:
After patch the average damage fell by ~10 thousand, but Merlin still strong.
After nerf Gem of Isolation - I not see fell damage. Still buy Gem.
02.08.19 Upd:
Remove Shaman's Ring to situation. Сhanged items buy order in main build. You can still change this order at your discretion.
Add additional situation items.
After 3-rd nerf:
Eclipse - Decreased Magical Power Scaling of the Initial Hit from 60% to 55%, Decreased Magical Power Scaling of the tick damage from10% scaling to 8%
Blizzard - Increased the Time to Deploy of this ability from 0.5 to 0.7
Elemental Mastery - Increased Cooldown from 28/26/24/22/20 to 32/29/26/23/20
It became more difficult to be top team dmg. But if play good - you can do this.
15.07.2020 Upd:
Remove Shaman's Ring from all builds. Remove 
Staff of Myrddin from situation items. Add Charon's Coin for some builds.
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But I'm not sure if you're considering one important aspect of Magus, and that is the protection reduction. Not only does it act as penetration for you, but as protection reduction, it reduces the protections of the enemy to also allow other magical teammates to also deal more damage. This is a very, very key aspect of protection reduction, making it a very useful team item, similar in utility to the control
If you're seeing similar damage between those two Spears, then, I would strongly suggest defaulting to Magus...you're already getting good CDR function out of
This is your build and your preference, but again, I think you're overlooking a key aspect of Magus, and it's probably because you don't get to see the actual effects of Magus in your numbers. That's a limited perspective that should be further considered.
Anyway...
Where is Spear of Magus in the main build? You know Magus is incredibly effective against squishies right?
Here is a revised build order:
So an example build:
Anyway Spear of the Magus is still good on Merlin, even after the nerf.
Ok andreyz5z, let's take Artemis for example. https://smite.gamepedia.com/Artemis
Artemis has 30 base magical protections at level 1, and gets 0.9 magical protection per level until level 20, leaving her with 48 magical protection at level 20, assuming she hasn't built any magical defense.
This is explained in the Word of Thoth mechanics guide: https://www.scribd.com/doc/166529015/The-Word-of-Thoth-A-Smite-Mechanics-Guide
Since you were so ignorant about
My example -
What??!! Of course you have free space for
Suprise suprise, you can still have both in your build, and
I'll list an example build:
Alternatively:
Look the build you used in the screenshot was fine. Perfect? No. Bad? No. Could