Kripp's Giant Ice Club Pygmalien Build

Assembling the Combo

One challenge of the build is finding the pieces in a timely matter. Unlike many other builds that you can gradually assemble from the beginning, this one will require you to seek vendors towards the mid game.

Both Giant Ice Club and Stopwatch are only available at Gold/Diamond tier, meaning they won't show up in earlier shops. So up until that point you'll need to work with what you've got.

Building up your Economy is a good start. You'll likely need to reroll at some more expensive vendors to increase your odds of finding the items. ATM and Rewards Card are two examples of great early investments.

As far as creating a playable build in the meantime, look to find an item that scales based on buying or selling items. Silk Scarf and Regal Blade are two prime examples. These are particularly strong if offered as your Silver tier starting item, but a Bronze one can still be serviceable thanks to the free Bronze to Silver upgrade upon reaching level four.

A good tip to keep in mind with the Bronze scalers is to save your items in your Stash until level four. Waiting until the upgrade gives you a lot better scaling value on the items when you do sell them, and is generally worth the trade off of having a slightly weaker item in the meantime.

Giant Ice Club + Stopwatch

Giant Ice Club is a really unique Large Weapon in that it actually counters Freeze. Any time an item is frozen it Charges three seconds. This means even with its long 12 second Cooldown it can dish out a ton of Damage quickly under the right circumstances.

Pairing it with Stopwatch creates a ridiculous two-item combo. Stopwatch Freezes both players' entire boards, which stacks up a chain reaction of Charge triggers for the Giant Ice Club to repeatedly bonk the opponent.

What takes this interaction to the next level is with a Radiant enchant, because instead of having to wait for the Giant Ice Club to unfreeze, it gets to immediately smash for massive Damage while the entire board is locked down.

Kripp enchanted his Stopwatch with Shielded in hopes of being able to find Emergency Shield. This would create a powerful interaction where upon reaching half Health, the Stopwatch would immediately trigger the combo. It's not necessary for the build to work (and he won before he could find it anyway), but is a cool interaction to keep in mind in case the opportunity arises.

Spices

Spices effectively doubles the Damage output of this build to increase the potency of the combo. Its timing is rather convenient, as despite its long eight second Cooldown, it should go off before Stopwatch (barring random Haste/Slows/Freezes).

While many other items of the build are replaceable, Spices is pretty important for its big boost in Damage. Unless you find various other strong means of scaling, it definitely justifies the slot on the board.

Small Items Package

The remaining items in the build are actually very flexible, but in most cases, Small items should be favored. This is because each item on board counts as its own separate trigger for the Stopwatch + Giant Ice Club combo. More items equals more triggers, which equals more bonks!

Marbles, Metronome, and Thrusters are all useful utility items. Each one is mean't to either accelerate your game plan or Slow down their's, buying more time for the combo.

Keep an eye out for Small items from other Heroes, as most options in Pyg's pool are generally pretty weak. Though at the end of the day, as long as you have something to fill out the board it should be fine.

Belt

Belt doubles your Max Health to help make sure you can survive until Stopwatch activates. Otherwise you run the risk of being bursted down before you pull off your combo.

This also makes skills like Emergency Shield or Second Wind significantly better, ensuring you have enough Health for them to actually take effect.

Second Wind

Second Wind doesn't have a lot of use in many builds as the timing on its Healing can often be unreliable. After all, if it goes off too soon the effect is essentially wasted.

However, paired with Giant Ice Club gives the build an excellent insurance policy. The first strike of the Giant Ice Club won't be anytime soon, so having access to a big burst Heal can really help turn the tide in close matchups (if you don't outright kill them first).

Big Guns

Big Guns is the most reliable way to up the Giant Ice Club's Damage. Alongside some reliable Crit Chance scaling it will drastically improve the build's overall output.

Alongside Spices effectively gives you quadrouple the Damage. At that point you really can't ask for anything else, so be sure to pickup Big Guns whenever it's offered.

Frozen Shot

Frozen Shot combos with Giant Ice Club, basically halving its Cooldown for the first several uses. While it's nice having additional Freeze to disrupt the opponent, ultimately this just helps accelerate the win condition.

All in all this is more like icing on the cake. It's a very nice pickup on top of everything else, but look to prioritize your survivability and base Damage first.

Fort

Fort gives the build a different angle of attack, allowing it to multiply its Damage output with the likes of Spices, all while slowing down the overall pace of combat.

Freeze skills can help make up for the lack of Stopwatch, but when you factor in its higher scaling, it generally doesn't need to swing more than once or twice.

Cold Room

Cold Room accelerates the countdown towards Giant Ice Club since it Freezes multiple items at once. Upgrades are important for this as the quantity of Freezes (and in turn Charges) differs between tiers.

The Multicast from Fort creates a total of six Freezes at once (assuming Diamond Cold Room), more than enough to get the Giant Ice Club clobbering started.

Piggles

Piggles may not get full value alongside only one Small item, but it with Fort's Multicast the Charge effect becomes far more effective. Considering Stopwatch is such a valuable component of many Giant Ice Club builds, it justifies the slot even when supporting just one item.

Spyglass

Spyglass gives a reliable amount of Crit Chance to the Giant Ice Club while also increasing an enemy item's Cooldown. This is particularly effective with Fort since stacking a longer Cooldown duration becomes all the more punishing.

Not having Stopwatch means there's less reliance on having Small items, making this a good utility option if you're able to luckily find it during your run.

Salt

Salt was buffed and now has incredibly fast Crit scaling, so even without Spyglass or skills you can easily reach 100%. Its fast Cooldown works great with Giant Ice Club since you'll have time to stack up before the first attack goes off.

Phonograph

Phonograph helps bring Giant Ice Club closer to its original power, as while it no longer Charges six seconds at Diamond, halving its Cooldown makes it just as effective. Plus, the higher base Damage tends to make up for the Charge changes.

Matchbox

Matchbox normally wouldn't have as big of an impact here, but in this case it scaled to insane proportions thanks to having a Fiery Gumball Machine. This allowed every single Gumball to add two more Burn, which is why it reached an insanely high 53 Burn.

Note that this will probably be nerfed after this has been written, but it shall remain here for context as to why the Matchbox was included in Kripp's particular run.

Obsidian Enchant

The rework to the Obsidian enchant is a big benefit to the build. As mentioned earlier, it's important to have some form of Damage scaling in order to close the game within a couple of swings. This is another Damage doubler and is amazing alongside Spices.