Saryn’s first ability is Spores. Saryn creates a couple of spores on an enemy unit. These deal Corrosive damage per second and have a chance to cause a Corrosive status effect, reducing enemy armor. These spores can be spread to other enemies. This can be achieved by destroying a spore with a weapon or ability. The spore will burst and nearby enemies will be infected with new spores. The spore that burst will then regrow on the original host. This will spread one spore. If an afflicted enemy dies, all spores will burst and infect nearby enemies but this will only occur if the enemy is killed by Saryn or another player. Spores do not spread if enemies are killed by the spores’ damage over time except if they were directly infected by casting the ability on them.
While there are active spores, the damage they do will increase over time, depending on the amount of enemies infected. More enemies infected means the damage will increase faster up to a cap. You can see the current Spores damage above your ability icons. When there are no enemies infected by Spores, the damage over time that has been accumulated will decrease immediately, after which it will start decaying over time until it reaches the starting Spores’ damage. The full decay can be prevented by casting Spores on another enemy before the damage decays completely. While there are active spores, Saryn can keep using the ability to infect other enemies. These spores that Saryn casts will have an energy discount but the overall damage over time of Spores will be reduced. Spores can also be cast on infected enemies, adding new spores.