UPDATE JAN 2025: Pistol Acuity in empty slot

UPDATE: As of June 2023, Zymos has been REVERTED to square crit mods again.

This is an under-estimated gun that can do insane crits despite it's appearances and base stats. On headshot, 6 homing spores are released that seek enemies in a 20m range. Despite the displayed base crit chance of 5%, [Zymos] actually has a wacky crit calculation where crit mods and flat crit increases like arcane avenger apply TWICE in the formula (check wiki for details).

This means with [Primed Pistol Gambit] and 0 crosshairs stacks, spores have a crit chance of 41%, but at max crosshair stacks has a crit chance of 184% (guaranteed yellow with chance for orange). With arcane avenger on top however, crit chance becomes 215% with no crosshairs stacks and 502% at max stacks (Tier 5 red crits!!)

The crit damage multiplier with both primed target cracker and sharpened bullets can go up to a whopping 18.7x!

Here is a run down of each mod:

• Galvanized Shot - multiplicative damage to hornet strike/deadhead on direct hits
• Semi-pistol Cannonade/Hornet Strike - multiplicative to galv shot and also affects AOE
• Frostbite or Primed Convulsion - cold combines with innate toxin to make viral, which magnifies all damage up to 4.25x at 10 viral procs. [Primed Convulsion] gives big raw damage and combines with toxin to make corrosive which strips armor up to 80% at 10 procs which is equivalent to approximately a 6x damage multiplier.
• Pistol Acuity, Primed pistol gambit and galvanized crosshairs - MASSIVE increase to crit chance of homing spores
• Primed target tracker - MASSIVE increase to crit damage of homing spores
• Haemorrhage - optional but helps finish off enemies that don't die to homing spores since spores have forced impact and can proc slash, flexible for more elemental dmg, more crit dmg (e.g. [Shrapnel Shot]), or magnetic might

Riven: If you are looking for a riven, you want +CD and CC as top priority, use riven in place of frostbite if you can roll a +cold dmg.

Arcane:

• Secondary Outburst should give the absolute highest buff but requires a melee with initial combo built or crescendo e.g. furax wraith/ceramic dagger
• Secondary merciless increases the abysmmal base ammo and reduces slow reload, and provides the +damage to the weapon rather than hornet strike.
• Secondary Deadhead is an even better option if you don't have ammo issues, since the +30% headshot crit bonus also double dips and the dmg buff lasts much longer. Getting procs of deadhead can be harder at higher levels since slash procs do not count, but the occasional one shot sill procs deadhead.

Synergizes well with abilities that lock down an enemy and allow you to spam headshots e.g. Well of life, Parasitic link, Xaku's Gaze. Also note zymos spores can trascend limbo's rift plane.

Can use with crit focused Nidus build: https://overframe.gg/build/216805/nidus-prime/critical-infestation-nidus-red-crits-and-immortality-steel-path/

Here is an example video of [Zymos]' synergy with [Nidus] Parasitic link + Larva