what if there were pickups you could get that added a status affect to all your weapons for 5, 10 seconds or something
IE you use a curse flavored weapon doohickey and for a little bit ALL your shots/sword swings/bombs have a strong chance to curse monsters (on top of their normal affect)
also maybe +X% elemental/shadow/whatever damage while they're active
It could even last the entire level or until you get out of the gate (like the HP bonus)