arekvoss

For damage, I pretty much went Mind Blades -> Silent Scream -> Amplified Wave. On beefier targets, Soul Ignition and Disintegration are good as well. You are correct on Body Attunement, Borrowed Instinct are very good debuff/buffs, and Pain Block is very good as well. I am currently 16 and a single class Ascendant, so Time Parasite is my jam. I have enough focus to use it at the start of battle in stealth and immediate attack out of it, and end up ascended in no time. With 0% armor and dual wielding, recovery time on those 0.5 (-50% from time parasite) second spells lets you spam them out. I am able to keep huge areas permanently prone while doing 110 damage every 2s or so.

I'm not sure I have a save in the broken state anymore. It was my wife who then redid about an hours worth of stuff to get back to that point. From my understanding, she did the line on 1. which was Welcome Aboard, Serafen or something. She questioned him about why he was joining first. Aloth makes a comment, and then I guess no popup happened for picking a class. She continued on for 20 or so minutes (enough to lose the autosave right before the choice) until I realized he never joined and was not available to be added to the party at the inn either. When redoing it, she tried to recreate the same decisions and got the popup to select his class. This was with an imported save from around the time White March 1 came out, but I can't imagine much is different about that encounter. I imported as well (from whatever the latest build is) and did not encounter this issue in my game.

This just happened to me as well. Didn't join at all, not just "joined but not currently in the party". Not on the ship or in the inn menu.