God of War PS4 Tier List - Best Characters & Builds

Tier List Overview

When it comes to ranking the elements of God of War (2018)—often referred to as GoW 4—the most relevant and impactful category to evaluate is undoubtedly the Builds. Unlike games where individual characters or standalone weapons operate in a vacuum, God of War’s combat loop is defined by the synergy between a primary weapon, its corresponding skill tree, Runic Attacks (both light and heavy), a specific armor set, and an enchantment setup. A Leviathan Axe with a melee-focused build plays fundamentally differently than a Leviathan Axe build centered around freezing and Runic burst damage.

This tier list ranks the absolute best builds in God of War PS4, taking into account the game’s "Give me God of War" difficulty, the post-launch balance patches (which notably nerfed the infamous "Boy Arrow" glitch), and overall combat efficiency. Whether you are pushing through the realms for the first time or grinding out the Valkyrie Queen Sigrun, your build dictates your success far more than any single piece of gear. We will be evaluating these builds based on their damage output, crowd control capabilities, survivability, and how consistently they can stagger high-level enemies.

S Tier

The S Tier represents the pinnacle of God of War’s combat design. These builds are virtually flawless, offering insane damage output, excellent defensive layers, and the ability to completely dismantle the game’s toughest challenges with relative ease. If you want the most powerful experience possible, you pick from this tier.

The Frost Absorption Runic Build (Leviathan Axe)

This build is widely considered the single most powerful setup in the entire game. It revolves around maximizing the Leviathan Axe’s Frost damage, converting that Frost into massive health and runic generation, and unleashing devastating Runic Attacks that can permanently freeze and shatter even the toughest Valkyries.

• Core Mechanics: The build heavily utilizes the Frost Awakening skill in the Axe skill tree, which grants a massive buff to Runic damage after freezing an enemy. By stacking Frost bonuses, enemies are frozen instantly, triggering the awakening, which then makes your subsequent Runic Attacks hit like an absolute truck.
• Key Armor: The Valkyrie Armor Set (specifically tuned with a Runic + Cooldown setup using the Niflheim materials or perfect rolls from the Ivaldi set) is essential. However, the true star is the Melee Patch enchantment, which gives you a chance to heal on every melee strike, providing absurd survivability.
• Runic Attacks: Tyr's Revenge (Heavy Runic) and The River of Frost (Light Runic). Tyr's Revenge is perhaps the most broken skill in the game; a massive, sweeping strike that deals colossal Runic damage and has incredible stagger potential.
• Why it's S Tier: The damage scaling is exponential. You freeze an enemy, your Runic damage spikes, you unload Tyr's Revenge, and the enemy dies. Furthermore, the high Frost stat translates directly into health regeneration, meaning the more damage you deal, the more unkillable you become.

The Maximum Stun Guarded Shield Build (Guardian Shield)

While Kratos is primarily an offensive character, this build turns him into an immovable object that weaponizes enemy aggression. It focuses on maximizing the Stun stat to absolute extremes, ensuring that every single block, parry, and shield strike pushes enemies into a stunned state immediately.

• Core Mechanics: By utilizing specific shield mechanics, every successful parry and shield bash generates immense Stun. Once an enemy is stunned, Kratos can perform a brutal Stun Grab, which deals massive percentage-based damage and restores massive amounts of health.
• Key Armor: The Muspelheim Armor Set is the backbone here. It provides a massive base boost to the Stun stat, and its set bonus grants a burst of Stun to all nearby enemies whenever Kratos performs a Stun Grab. This creates a chain reaction: stun one enemy, grab them, stun the rest of the room, repeat.
• Shield Choice: The Guardian Shield with the Shield Strike skill fully upgraded. You want to use the Dauntless shield perk, which allows you to absorb punishment and release a massive shockwave that inherently carries huge Stun values.
• Why it's S Tier: It completely bypasses the need for traditional damage stats. The Stun Grab deals a flat percentage of an enemy's maximum health. On "Give me God of War" difficulty, where enemies are massive health sponges, percentage-based damage is king. It is the ultimate counter to the Valkyrie Queen.

A Tier

A Tier builds are exceptionally strong, highly reliable, and will carry you through the entire game, including the post-game challenges. They lack the infinitesimal, game-breaking synergy of the S Tier setups, but they are arguably more fun and dynamic to play.

The Eternal Frostware Build (Blades of Chaos)

This build turns the Blades of Chaos into a relentless engine of area-of-effect destruction. While the Blades naturally lean toward Fire damage, this build intentionally pivots to maximize Frost status application, turning the weapon into a tool for massive crowd control.

• Core Mechanics: By equipping Frost-based pommels and Runic attacks on the Blades, you apply Frost to entire groups of enemies simultaneously. The heavy attacks of the Blades have a wide sweeping arc, meaning you can freeze three or four enemies in a single swing.
• Key Armor: The Ivaldi's Endless Mist Set is perfect here. Not only does it provide a massive boost to the cooldown of Runic Attacks, allowing you to spam them constantly, but its set bonus creates a low-level mist of healing that triggers every time you take damage, keeping you alive while you wade into the thick of combat.
• Runic Attacks: Hel's Touch (Light Runic) for a devastating cone of Frost damage, and Scourge of Hel (Heavy Runic) to pull frozen enemies in and shatter them.
• Why it's A Tier: The crowd control is unmatched. However, it falls slightly short of S Tier because applying Frost with the Blades is slightly less efficient than with the Leviathan Axe, and single-target boss damage can feel a bit lower compared to a purely Axe-focused build.

The Bare-Knuckle Brawler Build (Talon Bow / Fisticuffs)

A highly unorthodox but incredibly potent build that focuses on Kratos’s unarmed combat and Atreus’s arrows to proc status effects and create openings. This is a highly aggressive, high-risk, high-reward playstyle.

• Core Mechanics: This build relies heavily on Atreus to apply Shock and Frost from a distance. Once an enemy is staggered by a status effect, Kratos wades in using his bare-handed heavy attacks, which are surprisingly fast, deal high stun, and allow for rapid follow-ups.
• Key Armor: A mix of Zeus Armor (for the massive Strength and Runic bonuses) and high-Stun accessories. The core enchantment required here is the Amulet of Kvasir, which slows time significantly when you dodge at the last second, allowing you to seamlessly transition from a bare-handed dodge into a devastating counter-attack.
• Why it's A Tier: It is visually spectacular and deeply satisfying. The time-slow effect of the Kvasir amulet makes you feel untouchable. It is ranked in A Tier simply because it requires a very high mechanical skill ceiling to execute consistently without taking damage on higher difficulties, lacking the passive defensive layers of the Shield or Frost builds.

B Tier

B Tier builds are perfectly viable and will get the job done under most circumstances. They represent standard, straightforward ways to play the game that don't require specific armor farming or intricate synergy planning. However, they will struggle against the hardest optional bosses without significant player skill.

The Pure Fire Damage Build (Blades of Chaos)

This is the most intuitive way to use the Blades of Chaos. You equip the highest-level Blades you have, slot in Fire Runic attacks, and set enemies ablaze.

• Core Mechanics: The Blades naturally inflict the Burn status effect, which deals damage over time. This build focuses on igniting enemies and then using the heavy multi-hit combos to build up massive hit combos for the combo-meter XP bonus.
• Key Armor: Any standard Strength-focused armor, such as the Traveler Armor or the Vanir Armor, upgraded through standard progression.
• Runic Attacks: Blaze of Hel and Wrath of the Frost Ancient (ironically, using a Frost heavy Runic on the Blades is standard because it has better area denial than most Fire options).
• Why it's B Tier: Fire is arguably the weakest status effect in God of War PS4. Burn damage over time is negligible against high-level bosses who attack frequently, interrupting the DOT. Furthermore, many late-game enemies in Helheim and against the Valkyries are inherently resistant or immune to Burn, rendering a large portion of your build useless during the game's hardest fights.

The Critical Hit Luck Build

This build attempts to maximize the Luck stat to trigger critical hits and rare health/Runic drops from enemies.

• Core Mechanics: By stacking Luck on every piece of armor and enchantment, you increase the probability of landing a critical hit (which does double damage) and increase the chance that enemies drop Healthstones and Runic Anchors when hit.
• Key Armor: The Dwarven Armor Set, which naturally provides the highest Luck stats in the base game, supplemented by Luck-boosting enchantments like the Andvari's Soul.
• Why it's B Tier: It relies entirely on a Random Number Generator (RNG). In a game where you can face one-hit-kill scenarios on GMGOW difficulty, relying on a random chance to crit or a random chance for an enemy to drop a health stone is inherently inconsistent. It is a fun, relaxed build for normal difficulties, but fails to provide the deterministic reliability needed for top-tier rankings.

C Tier

C Tier picks are either highly situational, mathematically inferior to other options, or actively hinder your combat flow. These are builds or setups you should generally avoid unless you are doing a specific challenge run.

The Vitality Tank Build

This build operates under the assumption that if you have enough health, you can just outlast the enemies by soaking up damage.

• Core Mechanics: Maximizing the Vitality stat, using the Shield Wall perk of the Guardian Shield to block indefinitely, and using health-regenerating talismans.
• Key Armor: The Angborn's Dead Set or any heavy armor set socketed with Vitality runic sockets and enchantments like Motsognir's Call (which provides a massive health burst but locks out Runic attacks).
• Why it's C Tier: God of War’s combat is designed around aggression, not passivity. On higher difficulties, enemies will relentlessly break your guard, grab you out of shield wall animations, and deal massive chip damage. Furthermore, vitality scaling offers diminishing returns; having 500 health instead of 350 means very little when a Valkyrie's unblocked sweep attack does 400 damage. You sacrifice all of your damage and stun potential to survive a few extra hits, ultimately making fights last longer and increasing your chances of making a fatal mistake.

The Low-Level "No Upgrade" Run Builds

While technically not a specific gear setup, intentionally avoiding upgrades to keep your combat level low while utilizing base-tier Runic attacks is a popular self-imposed challenge.

• Why it's C Tier (in a general ranking context): If you are reading a tier list for optimal builds, a no-upgrade run is the exact opposite of what you want. You will deal Scratch damage to mid-game enemies, and your Runic attacks will have cooldowns that last an eternity because your Cooldown stat is zero. It is an incredible way to test your mastery of the game's mechanics once you are a veteran, but as a standard build recommendation, it sits firmly at the bottom.

How to Use This Tier List

Understanding the context behind this ranking is just as important as knowing the builds themselves. God of War PS4 received several significant patches post-launch that altered the combat landscape, and personal playstyle will always dictate how much you enjoy a given setup.

The Patch Context: When God of War first launched, the absolute highest tier was anything involving Atreus. Specifically, the "Boy Arrow" glitch—where switching arrows types instantly reset Runic Attack cooldowns—broke the game entirely. Sony Santa Monica patched this out relatively quickly. Later patches also slightly reduced the stagger values of heavy Runic attacks and adjusted the health values of enemies on "Give me God of War" difficulty. The builds listed in the S and A tiers above represent the fully patched, current state of the game, meaning they rely on legitimate stat synergy and skill expression rather than exploits.

Playstyle Matters: If you find yourself never using the Leviathan Axe because you prefer the fluid, multi-target chaining of the Blades of Chaos, do not force yourself to use the S Tier Frost build. The Eternal Frostware build in A Tier will serve you admirably. Conversely, if you struggle with parrying and timing dodges, the Maximum Stun Shield build will feel clunky and punishing, and you would be better served by the Ivaldi armor cooldown tankiness of the Blades build. A tier list is a guide, not a mandate.

Progression Notes: It is important to note that the absolute pinnacle of these builds (like the perfect Valkyrie armor or the Muspelheim set) cannot be acquired until the mid-to-late game. Do not wait to engage with the combat system. Early on, simply prioritize upgrading whatever armor has the highest Strength or Runic stats, and invest your XP evenly into both weapon skill trees to unlock the core stun combos. As you unlock Niflheim and the Muspelheim trials, you can begin farming the specific materials needed to transition into these top-tier setups.

Adapting to Enemies: Finally, the true secret to mastering God of War is flexibility. The highest-level players do not stick to one rigid build for every encounter. They might use the Frost Absorption build to delete a Revenant, but quickly swap to a high-Stun shield setup when dealing with an Ogres or Trolls. Keep your best Runic attacks equipped on both light and heavy slots for both weapons at all times, and do not be afraid to swap your armor in the menu before a major boss fight. By understanding why these builds work—the freeze-stun loops, the percentage-based grabs, the cooldown reductions—you can begin to mix and match their components to create a playstyle that is uniquely, devastatingly your own.