Da Ji, as of now is the newest god to be officially released for smite, and in her initial 4.9 Release people were largely underwhelmed. Her kit lacked any form of hard crowd control other than a pull with her ultimate, and that had a long cooldown, that was easily canceled by some for of CC cleanse (Ged shield, Ravana kick, etc.) and with both an odd delay on the chains landing plus the ability being easily countered by most gods in game who have CC or knockback immune ultimates. However despite all these downsides, her burst in late early game and mid game made for a god who could very easily get ahead and dominate the rest of the game. With the arrival of the 4.10 patch, nothing in Da Ji's kit was left unbuffed, with her getting a slow of her Horrible burns, her 1000 cuts got an increased scaling by 40% plus knockup immunity, her teleport got the delay removed, and her ultimate was given the option to cancel early. These buffs bought some favorable opinions to her, but people wanted more, saying her 1000 cuts didn't do any damage, and that her ultimate was bad, etc. I'm am going to start speaking from personal experience from this point on, but I believe that Da Ji was in a good spot in her released state, this comes from a series of games where i basically played non-stop Da Ji in an attempt to learn how to play her. I have come to believe that people call for Da Ji buffs because of A. her lack of proper crowd control and B. her burst damage is not instant bursts like many mages and assassins kits are, gods like Au Kuong, Posiden, loki, serqet, and zues, all have high instant or nearly instant amounts of damage that they can put out, but with Da Ji, her burst is lower but deals large amounts of damage over time, this means that kills can take slightly longer and there can be a fair amount of uneasiness on whether or not the person is going to die. Gods such as bastet can get away with this type of damage style because she has both a way of getting in and retreated in the same ability, her main source of damage in her bleed is high damage that is easy to hit, plus her early game cats shred people. Da Ji lacks a proper escape, because her initiate is her teleport, and other that that she lacks proper escapes other than a movement speed increase on her 1000 cuts. This leaves her in a weird spot for most people, requiring the player to be highly aggressive the entire game or risk getting behind, plus uncertainty on kills leads people to overstay their welcome, and with a fairly predictable move set, this leads people to see her as fairly weak.
The build that i currently use in conquest is as follows: Bluestone pendant, and Bumba's mask start, to warrior tabi, shifters shield, bloodforge, hydra's lament, heartseeker, and Jotunn's wrath. in other gamemodes i skip bumba's and swap the places of hydra's and heartseeker.