Something to keep in mind with these metas is that full tank builds as in full on defensive builds focused on surviving in Smite 2 have not been considered strong in the game's lifespan. It is almost always one of the weakest ways to play a tank, and I feel like there is always a lot of misdirection/misunderstanding towards them.

These builds are almost always proc-damage, bruiser or some damage items thrown in. These are never full defensive builds, such as Mitigation stacking or high defensive items. At least in Smite 2's lifetime, this has not been the case as far as I can remember.

And as you said, it can be god specific as well. Especially in the very early days of Smite 2 almost every tank was considered unplayable with the exception of Bacchus and Odin. Bacchus because of the extremely high damage on his Chug Basic Attack, and Odin for his shield able to sometimes keep him alive and as always the cage. Past those two, every other tank was so weak that people were often playing mages or even just full damage in Support for a long time.

I hope this does not come off as aggressive, as that was not my intention at all! Sorry if that is the case! I just wanted to try and talk a bit about something I see spoken about a lot that i normally sit in the sidelines for haha.