How to Make a Build for Kratos
Using What We Know about Stats in God of War
So, with all these different stats and all they do for you, how do we put them together to make a good build? This guide will summarize what I learned about the strength, runic, defense, luck, vitality and cooldown stats. I'll go a bit deeper for those who care to read. Follow the links below to read more about each stat (it is all on one separate page but the links will put you in that section).
The Six Stats of God of War
- Boosts physical damage - not runic attacks, but all fist, shield, and weapon attacks
- Enemies have defense - boost strength well beyond the enemy's defense (an unknown) to deal the full potential of your damage. Regular Draugr have low defense, but enemies like Travelers and Valkyries have much more.
- Doesn't Boost Atreus - Only his weapons, gear, and skills boost his damage.
- Boosts Runic Attacks - Working similarly to strength, you need to outclass the enemy's defense stat with your runic to deal ever more damage.
- Boosts certain Skills like Permafrost and frost explosions - See Frost/burn listed as a damage type on a skill? This boosts it, every axe attack when charged with permafrost, as well as those skills that say 'explosion of frost' etc.
- Enemy Attacks have armor piercing - They ignore the first x of Kratos' defense based upon the enemy's level. Once you meet the requirement you begin to see rapidly escalating damage reduction.
- Returns diminish on smaller attacks, but... - you're rewarded for larger defense on strong attacks from powerful monsters. A 75 damage skill can be reduced to single-digits!
- Roughly 1 HP per 2 Vitality - by far not a great amount.
- Out-shined by Defense - particularly for stronger monsters' attacks.
- Reduces Stagger Animations - When Kratos is hit hard, having higher vitality may make him stagger less. Even 100 vit didn't stop me getting interrupted by weak draugr, so it's just staggers/burns/poison reactions.
- May be more important on Give Me God of War - though, I'd say most players would prefer more direct defense, offense or cooldown than points going into vitality.
- Increases XP and Hacksilver gains - A very, very useful early-game stat
- The above is useless late game - however...
- Late game procs depend on it - Luck boosts the rate your 'moderate perk activation chance' and even 'low/high activation' will trigger. Very good for when you have multiple good effects that will trigger often in combat.
- Reduces the cooldown of runic attacks - Your multiple runic attacks and Atreus' summon can all be used more often with Cooldown.
- Diminishing Returns - The first 50 cooldown is worth 2x the 2nd 50 and 3x the third 50. Insanely high numbers are a waste of good stats. Invest in runic instead.
Putting it All Together
My personal preference after learning how things work is to make something well-rounded and ensure I get (at least) the early points in cooldown that are worth more than the later ones, for example. Am I really good at chaining physical attacks together and have ample strength but low runic? Boost it to deal more damage with your permafrost rather than tossing more strength onto the pile. When you can't chain, the runic will still boost damage dealt with light/heavy runic attacks so it's far from useless.
Stacking up to 180+ cooldown is silly and an absolute waste. In particular if you get to the point you're using +5 cooldown enchantments at level 7/8 in order to shave off a couple more seconds, while passing up enchantments with twice as much runic. Who cares if your heavy runics' cooldown is cut in half if they do half the damage they should. The goal should be to up your damage per second and a balance will accomplish that due to the diminishing returns on cooldown. Runic and strength don't seem to suffer that fate.
As you level, you should find more enchantments that have multiple stats. Something about them is that a level 6 enchantment with 10 runic and one with 7 runic/luck are considered the same when it comes time to compute Kratos's level. Some examples are even more extreme (like having 3-4x the stats of a stand-alone enchantment). Use the multi-stat enchantments that are clear winners and suit your playstyle first, then look to those with 2 stats with large stat boosts (in particular those you're weak in). If you can use both of the stats on the enchantment, you absolutely should use it, especially if they're both neglected. This process will take up over half your slots and beef up stats not covered by your armor, relic, and pommels.
When you've run out of the clear stat winners and shored up any weaknesses, fill in the remaining slots with Enchantments that provide on hit (or block/parry) buffs that will reward your style of combat. This is where builds really come into play, because your pommel may encourage you to use cleave or you may get a strength boost from parrying. Your enchantments may cause you to inflict more frostburn. You can actively manage these based on the task at hand. For example one of the Valkyries will be parried a lot. Others will require you to block but not provide many parry opportunities. Designating a piece of armor the 'optional' enchantment holder saves you continually putting back in your Eye of the Realm.
This is where luck comes into play. If you only have a pommel that procs a special and don't have much luck, it might not be worth investing in luck later in the game. I absolutely recommend it earlier because the extra hacksilver and experience are more valuable than a few more strength. You'll be stronger just from having fully upgraded equipment. When your Kratos has access to 2-3 boosts you really like late-game, go for at least 50+ luck so that it'll fire more often. It very likely has diminishing returns so I would not push it much past the 80-100 range for that reason.
Skill bonuses should be considered, along with any bonus abilities on the armor. You can give them a try and if it doesn't work out, change your enchantments and ditch the bonus. If you use a skill a lot and it gets a nice boost, consider trying to meet the minimum. Skill bonuses are in no way necessary and many of them are underwhelming if you do not desire that stat on its own.
See the Stats in God of War page for more detailed info on all the stats. If my guide helps you, share it with other God of War players so that people will know this site exists! There are dozens more pages to be made but it's more encouraging when people visit, so thanks for reading.
Other God of War Guides
God of War Tips - My Intro Page with loads of advice.
God of War Stats: What Luck, Cooldown, Strength, Defense and Runic do for Kratos
Atreus in Early to Mid Game - Making use of Atreus and upgrading his abilities.
Status Effects - Permafrost, Immolation, Shock, etc.
Niflheim (End Game Content) - Increase Mist Resistance.
