Gram Splendor/Strategy

Ice Combination, Icicle Rise, Cold Blade, and Frozen Upper
This set of normals is the bread and butter of Gram. Once you are in position to use them, it is a great idea to keep them under pressure with loops if you land a hit on them, as it is great for the rushdown mind game to prepare them for your finishers, weapons or specials to land. The first attack of Ice Combo is great for scouting out blocks and short enough recovery to get back into neutral position in time to block a well predicted counter. Icicle Rice works as a minor anti-air move to catch someone who may try to swiftly attack your back. Cold Blade will freeze the opponent when finished properly, but if the opponent jumps and gets hit by the first set of damage frames, they will be stunned in the air and drop, allowing for another few hits land on the now defenseless opponent. Lastly, Frozen Upper, when successful, provides several options during the air wake-up game. If your opponent chooses not to wake up, it is capable of numerous juggles with the strong combo set getting a little weaker with every juggle. If your opponent decides not to wake-up and you don't have the strong combo ready, you can use the weak combo and possibly finish with an Axe or Cold Blade at the end if you react fast enough. If your opponent does decide to wake up and you predict it correctly, you can keep the opponent under pressure with more combos or cut to the specials to do more damage and easily enter Scythe Form at the same time. Hitting a guarded target with these attacks will cause considerable chip damage to low defense or no guard opponents.

Frost Stab
The Frost Stab is very nice for its burst of speed and freezing effect, making it great for covering ground while also allowing an opportunity for pursuits to land on the downed target. Do keep in mind that only the second damage frame will actually freeze the opponent, in the rare event that they jump and barely nick the hitbox. This is always a good option for interrupting the opponent to prevent them from doing hold attacks or predicting where they will be when they start running circles around you. If you're using a tank set, this is the go to move for evading quick aerial guard breaking moves.

Icicle Growth
This is one move that is debatable for an inherit replacement. It's great to use at the beginning of matches in maps where you're far from your opponents, but hardly finds use when starting close together. It's second form is only a visual change and carries no extra effects to the sword from's attacks. After this half, Gram will become a complete scythe and be able to utilize its alternative move set, which most of the specials can do while also damaging the opponent at the same time. For the slower fighters, it would be a good idea to stick with scythe form as much as possible to use Icicle Talon's mobility as well as having extra range and power with each swipe.

Frost Bullet
The closer you are to the target, the more likely that all three bullets will hit, dealing its optimal damage. That said, it's not really powerful even when all three hit, so it is best used as a zoning move to prevent opponents from using holds or intercept aerial threats at a distance.

Ice Edge/Slash and Frost Edge/Slash
Both the neutral and dash specials attack with the same animations, and the same goes for the supers. For the best results, use your normals to pressure your opponent or launch them up in the air with Frozen Upper and predict a wake up. Supers also have the great knack for going past counters you baited with the Ice Combination to guarantee a landing attack. When it successfully hits, the combo ends transforming the sword into a scythe, doing one or two swings, depending on the rank of the special, where you will then be able to use Gram's alternative move set. The 360 hit box of the final attacks are great for launching nearby enemies as well as the one caught in the main attack.

Growth Edge/Blade
These moves present a respectable amount of utility for its user, as it doesn't need hit an opponent to activate the scythe form of Gram. While this alone is great, the optimal time to use this skill will be to punish predicted straight shooting accessory or weapon attacks. With the opponent likely still recovering from the attack, they won't have as much of a chance to guard or jump away from the ice forming below them, freezing them and allowing the next part of the attack to hit without fail unless interrupted by another opponent's attacks. Its important that you are close to the target when using this, as even if the icy floor freezes the target, if its in the outer extremities of the hit box, then the scythe swings will fail to hit and the opponent will just thaw and fall on the ground with little damage. Growth Blade creates an even longer ranged ice floor than it's normal counterpart, making it especially useful for attacking opponents further away, though still much better if used in close proximity for maximum damage.

Icicle Talon
This attack is basically the bane of slow targets in an edged environment (especially Great Avyon). While the normal version does a small leap and blockable damage, leaving the user wide open, the held version throws the opponent forward, stunning and knocking down any other nearby enemies in the process. Its very wonderful for interfering with enemies in Mega Force missions, but its an extremely risky practice to perform in GAT matches.

Frigid/Gelid Iceberg
These attacks, like sword form's air specials, contain the greatest utility among scythe form's specials. Unlike sword form though, the air special itself has just as good, if not greater, utility than its super move counter part due to simply being faster. Assuming you're capped on damage, it does quite a lot, and it doesn't even matter how slow you are, as the attacks will carry you for quite a distance, making it great for punishing shooting enemies that don't have or aren't prepared to use their anti-air options. Gelid Iceberg is slower, but travels slightly further and deals greater damage, with the ice shards hitting at a lower angle than Frigid Iceberg, making it good for attacking oncoming rushers. The most damaging part of both attacks, however, end with a splash of ice erupting from the ground, and if they are to miss, you will be left wide open for attack, and its much easier than you think, as doing this move next to a wall will have the ice erupt at the wall rather than the ground where your target likely is, leaving you wide open.

Styles
Gram Splendor leaves room for four attacks to be utilized by the style using it, the weak and strong air attacks, as well as the step and weak dash attacks. It's reliance on strength already knocks out Gambler style from being a decent choice, as Gram's projectiles are also strength based, where their small size gives the sword and scythe less range. Magician/Telepather styles don't have any significant changes to how they use Gram, and even bring moves that other styles will use better.

Hero
The Hero style benefits greatly from Gram's move set and attack range. Like many Hero sets, speed is not a primary focus, as several of Gram's moves compensate well for that speed and may even bring an element of surprise for players not expecting the sudden increase with the dash attacks. Gram's normals will not only override Hero's, but will also secure the same offensive role with safer attacks, multi-hit, and air launching properties, making a very dangerous opponent to battle up close. Both jump attacks have a wide hit box, and are really nice choices when jumping around opponents to confuse them. This style makes especially dangerous use of the jump specials of both forms, where both can punish single shot shooters with relative ease using an alarming attack speed regardless of the speed stat and wide range combined with an already devastating attack power. Lastly, the weak dash is a great alternative for a standard dash attack when in scythe form thanks to the accessory's change in utility and use, and even in sword form, where the attack can be used to get closer without completely knocking the opponent down, allowing you to go into your pressure combos.

Weapons
Gram's reliance on strength knocks out all of the gun weapons if you're relying on a bulk and power set, as there will hardly be any tech to cause sufficient damage, assuming you can even shoot someone with a gun.

Battle Ax
This is probably the most useful weapon overall for Gram Splendor, as there are several options within Gram's set that deals a full attack's worth of damage and freezes the target, where it is even easier to pursuit with an axe. While swords can be faster and slightly longer ranged, axes have the benefit of breaking guards and make the greatest use of your overwhelming power.

Skills
Because of Gram's mobile and decent range movepool, speed is hardly an issue to account for, so like many weapons of its kind, giving up speed for defense and power will give you the best results. But if you're wanting to capitalize on this mobility, enhancing your speed stat will work nicely too.

Power Skills
Strong Power is of course a good start, but Will of Immovability (the inherit of the Statue Arm alchemy accessory) will not only give you that power, but add a point of defense as well. This lowers your mobility, which isn't a bad trade for this accessory. If you're using your Gram for Linda Bobo missions, then Berserker or Viking (Isa Nifheimer Inherit) will be great choices, with Fire Vals being considerably easy to kill right off the bat with Glacial Bloom.

Trick Skills
A great trick skill will be Rapid Motion, as Gram's hold attacks will be done faster, an extremely useful skill in Grand Fortress. If you're running a Berserker set, Skanda may prove useful to either cancel out the lost speed from Will of Immovability or just make your Berserker overall much faster if you went with Strong Power.

Life Skills
Toughness will drop 1 Jump Stat for 2 Defense, or you can be a little risky and give yourself a boost of damage with that same defense addition with No Guard.

Battle Royal
Gram makes for a great hazard accessory for defending key locations on the map. Glacial Bloom's spread shots will make missile hurdling to your core that much more difficult. You can either sit outside of the core room, where three of your ice shots will cover each direction your enemies can come from, defend the missile area, or the core room itself, or you can secure a sub-core so that your enemies can't take it for themselves as your allies bring their own rocket.

Red Bull
Bulky Gram is a very beautiful accessory to run in these missiions when you have the right support. Your main targets of interest will be the smaller physical attackers that will do minimal damage when they hit you. You may want to bring axes to deal with larger enemies that tend to be slower and block a lot, though if you don't have these, its better to have teammate support when fighting higher tiered heavyweights like Digital Demon and Boboi, both of which can break through your high defenses and deal very unpleasant damage. You should outright avoid any confrontation with ranger typed enemies like Donky unless they're distracted by another teammate.

Explore the Secret Passage
Gram's sword form caries everything one can ask for in the Destroyer department, with relatively quick anti air to attack bees, multi hitting attacks for the cyclopes, and great combo linking to deal with Beast Kings.

Linda Bobo
Gram is possibly THE BEST ice element accessory you can bring to the fortress mission. Your primary position will be the center of the arena. From there, you use Glaciel Bloom, aiming at the Val Fire/Flame enemies primarily, while other shots will hit other enemies. Use Frost Wind when enemies start invading your personal space. Frozen Slash strangely doesn't deal ice damage, and is nice for taking out the Val Ice/Freeze enemies if teammates haven't already killed them off. Battle Axes are very nice for fighting bosses with your immensely huge power. Your biggest problem will likely be Omusa Dragon, who's firepower can quite easily knock you down to near death from near full health in an instant if you're not careful, even if your defense is crazy high.

Street Fight
The form you use most will likely be decided by how many players are in the room at the time. Sword form is okay when there are a few people, but once it fills up, go into scythe form and you can easily wreck shop with specials or holds.

Duel
Really nothing of important note for duels, just remember that much more effort will be required from you to attack fast moving rangers and keep your ground.