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Standard start for pretty much every game with Lifesteal. You have decent sustain in lane, and against aggressive lanes you are going to be glad to have the extra health pot.
Hunter's Blessing
Tiny Trinket
Healing Potion
Mana Potion
Shoes of the Magi for 
Elixir of Speed and 
Obsidian Shard or some defence if you are needing it.
Generally good for powerful basics
Late, sell Shoes of the Magi for Elixir of Speed and Obsidian Shard or some defence if you are needing it.
Shoes of the Magi
Bancroft's Talon
Demonic Grip
Hastened Ring
Telkhines Ring
Rod of Tahuti
Warlock's Staff early. This is generally good against less aggressive lanes where you can build a lead farming Warlock's Staff early.
If you are trying to be a bit safer in the midgame and lategame teamfights, you can sacrifice some of your early pressure by rushing into a Warlock's Staff early. This is generally good against less aggressive lanes where you can build a lead farming Warlock's Staff early.
Hunter's Blessing
Uncommon Staff
Healing Potion
Mana Potion
Shoes of the Magi for Elixir of Speed and Obsidian Shard or defence if you need it, such as 
Magi's Cloak
Lategame, sell Shoes of the Magi for Elixir of Speed and Obsidian Shard or defence if you need it, such as Magi's Cloak
Warlock's Staff
Shoes of the Magi
Bancroft's Talon
Demonic Grip
Chronos' Pendant
Telkhines Ring
For Midlane:
The only Ability Based build I'm going to go over. I generally think it's best to skip a blessing and just get t2 book so you can get online faster.
Book of Souls
Healing Potion
Mana Potion
Shoes of the Magi over 
Shoes of Focus if you feel like you need the pen, but with pen coming online next item anyways I don't think you need it.
Divine Ruin is good over 
Spear of Desolation against heal heavy comps, but it will hinder your one-shot potential. Shoes of Focus for Elixir of Speed and either 
Book of the Dead for defence or 
Soul Reaver for more damage.
For Midlane:
Other options are Shoes of the Magi over Shoes of Focus if you feel like you need the pen, but with pen coming online next item anyways I don't think you need it.
Divine Ruin is good over Spear of Desolation against heal heavy comps, but it will hinder your one-shot potential.
Lategame, sell Shoes of Focus for Elixir of Speed and either Book of the Dead for defence or Soul Reaver for more damage.
Book of Thoth
Shoes of Focus
Spear of Desolation
Obsidian Shard
Shaman's Ring
Rod of Tahuti
Divine Ruin for the situational antiheal
Mage's Blessing for some matchups, though I don't use it enough to tell you how viable it is Rod of Tahuti is for really closing out build. I really only use it a lot through my AA build, but it can be built in most of these builds. Spear of Desolation is good in the ability based build, you can build it last slot if you don't need a ton of pen
Mantle of Discord, Magi's Cloak good all-around defence that grant CC immunity, which is very good for our man 
Chronos
Celestial Legion Helm, 
Dynasty Plate Helm, 
Void Stone situational defence
Divine Ruin for the situational antiheal
Mage's Blessing for some matchups, though I don't use it enough to tell you how viable it is
Rod of Tahuti is for really closing out build. I really only use it a lot through my AA build, but it can be built in most of these builds.
Spear of Desolation is good in the ability based build, you can build it last slot if you don't need a ton of pen
Mantle of Discord, Magi's Cloak good all-around defence that grant CC immunity, which is very good for our man Chronos
Celestial Legion Helm, Dynasty Plate Helm, Void Stone situational defence
Divine Ruin
Mage's Blessing
Rod of Tahuti
Spear of Desolation
Mantle of Discord
Magi's Cloak
Celestial Legion Helm
Void Stone
Dynasty Plate Helm
Purification Beads and 
Aegis Amulet are your go-to relics for most games. If you are playing something like Chronos solo, you can pick up Meditation Cloak, but it seems like you would probably want beads over it.
Phantom Veil if you absolutely need it for 
Odin
Purification Beads and Aegis Amulet are your go-to relics for most games. If you are playing something like Chronos solo, you can pick up Meditation Cloak, but it seems like you would probably want beads over it.
Teleport Glyph is a sound option for solo as well
Phantom Veil if you absolutely need it for Odin
Purification Beads
Aegis Amulet
Teleport Fragment
Phantom Veil
Y
B
A
X
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Pro's
Scales into Mid-lategame well, has good damage potential Has great sieging for a mage. His Accelerate IV makes your basics hit really hardCan really fill the "Carry" role, sieging towers and objectives easily and poking backline consistently. |
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Cons
Has little to no escapes from hard CC without beads Has trouble against gods with lots of CC Immunity Can struggle to transition into late game if the early game goes especially bad |
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Hastened Ring and Telkhines Ring are pretty essential for attack speed, as well as having autos that can chunk squishies. Hastened Ring's passive is reminiscent of 
Hastened Fatalis, albeit fixed and for mages. Against frontline, Demonic Grip is good pen, and against squishies it's good damage.. Book of Thoth, which goes very well lategame with Book of the Dead These two make it very hard to get bursted in teamfights, since it gives you time to use Rewind while a very large shield is up.
Purification Beads and 
Blink Rune doesn't let you be as aggressive as if you had Aegis Amulet in the last spot because you will have trouble disengaging. Stop Time+Auto Attack+ Time Rift lets you get a guaranteed hit of Time Rift, which packs big damage once you get just a couple levels and an item into it. Accelerate taking the 4th quadrant, AA, then doing the combo above can one tap some squishies early, and can really pressure squishies late. Rewind, with good setup, lets you use the whole combo over again, dealing dangerous amounts of damage to tanks, and most likely killing squishies at any stage of the game.
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Im still trying to figure out an optimal ability based Chronos build myself, and whether poly or instead, soul gem could be needed.
He did give this build as his mosted recently used (for ability based): book of thoth, cdr boots, deso, obs shard, reaver, tahuti, sell boots for book of dead (or AA-Ring like Telkhines or Demonic). (not saying switch the build, just something to try if you want to test for an optimal ability based build like im trying to find).
You could try how this style of build work out (similar to the ones I tried to use but didn't feel right for me): https://www.smitefire.com/smite/guide/time-boi-chronos-s5-20417
There is another build you could try, but it's auto-attack hybrid (though I don't see why you would prioritise it over warlocks + bancrofts - which gives you lifesteal and more health):
AA-build - fine, though if you're getting Dynasty plate helm, get it after boots and before bancrofts. (sell it late for like a mantle of discord or hide of the urchin or a damage item).
tanky start - fine. Also warlocks start is worse against "aggressive early adcs" because it's a weaker start than the tiny trinket one, second, warlocks makes your early game pretty slow and weak and forces you to farm as much as possible.
Tanky adc - im not sure why you're building spear of the magus on Chronos. The only good situation you would gain benefit from it's passive is hitting both your 1 + 3 on a target, and then auto-attacking afterwards. The passive is pretty meh for ability damage as Chronos isn't a DoT mage, so you're missing out on ability damage with it. The problem with hitting your 1 + 3 is that the 3 is on a long cooldown and is pretty much your only self-peel outside of ult and relics, so just by this alone you can already tell why Magus isn't a great idea, then there's also the fact you actually need to hit your 3 which in quite a few situations won't be very easy, unless you're melee range next to someone (but this isn't going to be a good idea in a lot of situations).
Also the tanky adc build does not have enough pen by the lategame to deal with tanks, and I don't like the idea of just relying on only Telkhines in a "ADC" build.
Improved "tanky adc" -
Book of Thoth Ability Based Start - you can only get 3 potions if you start tier 2 thoth.
Book of Thoth Ability Based (See Notes for Selling Boots) - Should be going
Now onto
I already explained why Magus isn't a good choice.
Also this is an ability based build, yet no
Improved "Book of Thoth Ability Based" -
Situational Items - Mage's blessing - In mid you want this over hunter's if stacking warlocks.
No
Relics - Meditation Cloak - you don't need this in solo lane, you have Section II on Accelerate (and you can mana sustain with blue buff), and you can pick up Warrior's Blessing which you can proc at range with your autos or 1.
Phantom Veil - only if your team doesen't pick it up, Odin is kinda meh now anyway, also your ult can get you out the cage as well.
Blink - If you blink and then you rewind, you get returned to where you blinked to, not where you blinked from, just telling you that.
I would list teleport just as a solo lane choice.
Levelling order - fine.
"Pro's
Really good early game, can take towers exceptionally early"
Yeah im not sure about this one chief. Maybe you were thinking of Sol for the second part.
"Cons
Has trouble being mobile"
What? We just forgetting what accelerate does? Or how Rewind works if you don't stand still for like 10 seconds?
"Cons
Can struggle to transition into late game if the early game goes especially bad"
This applies to basically anyone that isn't The Morrigan.
Also you didn't listed one of his biggest cons which is CC immunity counters Chronos harshly, whether it's beads, magi's cloak, or a CC-immune ability.
"His item builds depend on whether you plan on being an earlygame AA based true ADC, or a more lategame teamfighting ability based mage." - Chronos isn't an early game adc... The aa-build just comes online sooner and is more META.
"For AA Based builds, Hastened Ring and Telkhines Ring are pretty essential for attack speed, as well as having autos that can chunk squishies." - Hastened is bought for the passive, not for it's stats. If you don't need the passive badly for chasing/juking/boxing, then you can swap this item for something else.
"Against frontline, Demonic Grip is good pen." - has good base stats, cheaper and does more damage than hastened, even against squishies.
"Early game, be as aggressive as you can." - only if the enemy duo is not putting up much pressure in lane, and you still have to watch out for ganks.
"The 2+3+1 combo
Accelerate taking the 3rd quadrant, then doing the combo above can one tap some squishies early, and can really pressure squishies late." - You almost never want to do this combo unless you won't get a chance to use autos. You get much more damage off by using AA-cancelling with the 3 + 1 with Section IV activated, even when going ability-based. Not to mention if you're going ability based you should have poly in your build at some point.
If you're not going to AA-cancel with the 3+1 and not building poly on an ability-based Chronos, play another burst mage instead.
Only strange thing is that the button publish doesn't change to update
"Really good early game" - which you know isn't the case.
Also:
"The 2+3+1 combo
Accelerate taking the 4th quadrant, then doing the combo above can one tap some squishies early, and can really pressure squishies late."
You don't just activate the 2, you also auto attack (once, maybe twice with some attack speed), after hitting your 3, then use the 1, then auto attack once more.
https://youtu.be/cEhtdr_nxto?t=268
Lastly, the book of thoth start still has too many potions listed, you can only buy 3 if you start