Not all gods are the same. Being God of War probably has to be more about head-to-head fighting. Sitting on his ass and throwing projectiles would be more of a Zeus way of dealing with things.
He's the
god of war, not the soldier. Haha. No god wastes time and that's what you'd be doing if you were fighting head-to-head when you could simply will your opponent's own sword through their face.
My expectation/hope for Ares was that he'd have this ridiculously large Nightmare-style zweihänder, and his trait would be to shift stances between slow, powerful sword-in-hand stance and a faster telekinetic sword stance where it works like Eddie's Shadow/Carl Clover's automaton.
It never once occurred to me that a
god would engage in brawler style combat.