You need to keep the curse or the extra upgrade gets removed as well.
Exploding curse works really good with spirit bow as the explosion takes place next to the target rather then where you are.
I think forgetting the layout might be a bit too hard and easily cheesed by taking a screenshot, but I agree that the Ascension can be made harder
It's really easy to do even with no PoH because of the healing you get on boss floors.
I noticed that when using Brawlers Stance the ROF does more damage.
I also noticed that the scaling isn't consistent: for example with one strength, a +0 ring does 5-14 damage with and a +1 ring deals 9-20 damage gaining 4-6 scaling. But a +2 ring only deals 10-22 with 1-2 scaling even though I was at 1 strength the whole time.
Does anyone know how RoF scales with brawler stance? I couldn't find anything on the wiki.