>>720231094
A lot of the first HK progression felt like that, too. At the start you are but a measly, sickened child, who can only take a measly 5 hits, but at the end you are truly a God of Void, up against the toughest Dream Bosses and Pure Vessel, and you can now take... exactly 5 hits. Or you could not bother with masks at all and take 3 and that's really not that much different.
The only upgrades that really felt like the moved the needle at all in the first HK were the damage-ups. Which we know they do, because we have the datamined numbers and it goes up 4 points a level at base 5 so Pure Nail deals 4x as much damage.
I'm curious what the under-the-numbers calculations are going to look like for Silksong. I definitely used Tools an infinite amount more than Nail Arts, or any spell that isn't the one with i-frames, but the Needle is definitely going to be a fair bit worse than the Nail in terms of spell damage ratios. Silksong makes it such a pain in the ass to get half the damage upgrades so I can't image they're that integral.