Beanna

You lose the penetration bonus from Tenacious because the modal has priority and still get the deflection malus obviously. So it's a lose/lose situation, better to simply turn off both sword and sabre modal, which for a martial class, is some very silly design imo.

I always supposed that weapon modals were counted as passives because, well, they are passives... But recently I discovered that the additional +2 Pen from my Sword Modal was actually suppressing the bonus penetration from my Tenacious inspiration (from Berserker's Frenzy). Now that seems very odd to begin with that modals aren't actually considered as passives and I would really like to know if this is working as intended. Also it's very counterintuitive that the sword Modwyr appears as a weapon perfectly tailored for Berserkers as it cancels the Confused status and friendly fire from Carnage but in fact you're being punished for activating the sword modal because it cancels your Tenacious inspiration as well as afflicts your character with a Deflection penalty... So basically it's best to not increase your sword proficiency and not use the modal... Surely that can not be the intended design. Just wanted to shed some light on this issue in case it's not common knowledge yet and maybe bring it to the attention of Obsidian in case it's an oversight. These staking rules are really crippling build crafting and optimization... I do understand the limitation for balance purpose but it is really frustrating to come up with new multiclass combinations and group compositions only to realize that half the synergies are arbitrarily suppressed. It feels too narrow to me.