Spore shroom kinda sucks?

[SMOOTHIE_KING]

Even with defender's crest behind it, spore shroom still only does as much damage as thorns, and it's per-heal instead of per-hit, so if you're using the deep focus synergy it has, that's going to be half as much damage per fight since you recover two masks per heal. It would have made a lot more sense for deep focus to give it double duration instead. I guess its good for stuff like lost kin's mobs.

[Darc Vader]

I’m fairly sure deep focus makes the cloud bigger, and the cloud also slows enemies inside it (not sure if that part affects bosses though)

[SMOOTHIE_KING]

Yeah, but if you're in it for the synergy, you're getting fewer spore shroom casts per fight if you're mixing it with deep focus, since you'll only have to heal yourself half as often (unless deep focus causes you to screw up more heals and take damage more frequently, but if that were the case then you just wouldn't use it at all).

[Hyped 4 Shrek 5]

There's nothing stopping you from using Deep Focus while you only have one mask of health below maximum, and there's also no guarantee that Thorns of Agony will hit a boss you took damage from.
However, I am probably going to agree that Thorns > Spore because I use Thorns in setups for a bunch of bosses while the only time I ever remember using Spore was when I was experimenting with weird charm builds for Grey Prince Zote.

[Syndiciate]

Yeah, Spore Shroom is a lower tier charm in terms of usefulness.

[SMOOTHIE_KING]

Well of course there's nothing stopping me from healing just one heart with DF equipped, but if I'm healing just as often with DF equipped than without, then there's really no reason to spend four slots on it in the first place. The goal of DF is to heal less. Pairing it with an item that procs per-heal is odd. Maybe the synergy is supposed to be a kind of compensation, like with grubberfly and fallen which would otherwise be unuseable together.

[Aeternalis the Abyssal Alchemist]

Hyped 4 Shrek 5 の投稿を引用：

There's nothing stopping you from using Deep Focus while you only have one mask of health below maximum, and there's also no guarantee that Thorns of Agony will hit a boss you took damage from.
However, I am probably going to agree that Thorns > Spore because I use Thorns in setups for a bunch of bosses while the only time I ever remember using Spore was when I was experimenting with weird charm builds for Grey Prince Zote.

You do know that you don't have to be missing health to use Focus, right?

Also, Thorns is not going to be much help in the Nail Binding challenges, since Thorns is based on your Nail's damage. Even Nailmaster's Glory, while still based on Nail damage, would still be a better use of one notch in the Nail Binding challenge.

[SMOOTHIE_KING]

Null the Abyssal Alchemist の投稿を引用：

You do know that you don't have to be missing health to use Focus, right?

Yeah but again, if I'm focusing from full health all the time, there's almost no reason tor DF to even be equipped. Why have something which doubles the healing rate but slows me down when I'm not even healing? The charms don't really work together despite having "synergy." If you aren't healing half as often, you aren't going to use DF, but if you are healing half as often, you probably aren't going to use spore shroom. Opposing conditions of use.

Null the Abyssal Alchemist の投稿を引用：

Also, Thorns is not going to be much help in the Nail Binding challenges, since Thorns is based on your Nail's damage. Even Nailmaster's Glory, while still based on Nail damage, would still be a better use of one notch in the Nail Binding challenge.

Godstuff is extremely lategame though, most people aren't going to touch it until they've spent 40+ hours on everything else. You could just as easily say that thorns is bad on NKG/Radience since they do twice the damage. That doesn't matter when stacking lifeblood masks with thorns still lets you take off 60% of the hollow knight's health just by running into him. Most bosses below him are going to have more or less the same proportionality if they're staying in Thorns's range, and even NKG can have a quarter of his health taken out, which would be pretty efficient for a single slot if it weren't for all his ranged attacks preventing you from getting it. People would probably complain about endgame difficulty less if they didn't have this crutch for so long early on.

Just compare it to fragile/unb strength. That's 50% more nail damage, so you're removing a third of the fight since what would normally take 3 swings should now take 2. Strength is a three slot charm, so that's 11% of the fight per slot. Even if thorns activates just seven times against THK it'll erase just as much, when you've got nine masks of base health. With just a lifeblood core you're up to almost 20% of the fight gone just from running into the guy without healing.

Even if we suppose quick slash lets you land roughly 50% more attacks per opening on average (making it on-par with strength's 50% increase in damage) and multiply it with strength, that's an additional ~125% DPS (or per opening, really; not speaking in speedrunner terms), which is effectively trimming off 45% of the fight if we're just using the nail, or less if we aren't using the nail 100% of the time. A full blown health build is giving you twice as many screwups AND removing 60% of the fight via said screwups.

[Bippopotamus]

it has lore stuff with it yes it sucks but to get the extra ending you must use it

[Onni]

Just think of it being like a discount void heart since you need both for endings

[Hyped 4 Shrek 5]

Something I just noticed about Spore Shroom that makes it even worse is that it seems to have a 5 second cooldown between bursts so if you heal multiple times within 5 seconds you'll only get 1 spore cloud, so it's not really a per-heal attack after all unless you only heal once per opportunity.

[SMOOTHIE_KING]

I guess that makes it slightly less counterintuative to use it with deep focus than I'd thought.