Defense items not really worth it?

I played my fair share of smite 1 but am still fairly new to smite 2. In smite 2, I’ve really been focusing on trying each role to see the differences in gameplay/building. Almost every game I see the full damage solo just ravaging through everyone taking little to no damage even despite clearly getting hit numerous times. I just played my first solo game. My team was clearly a bunch of newer people so we got killed, but solo started as a fairly even match. I played Chaac against a Zeus. After about 10min of playing, it wasn’t even fair. I had 2 magical protection items (they had 4/5 magical gods) and was getting deleted any time I tried to apply pressure while my abilities did fuck all to him even though he was full damage.

Is building defensive items just not worth it right now? From what I see, they aren’t, but again I’m still new.

I also don’t get how they changed offensive items to strength/intelligence but somehow I still have magical/physical protection items. I like the new offensive building but the defensive side doesn’t seem to correlate.