SSTO before wing incidence: https://imgur.com/a/gvncDF8

SSTO after wing incidence: https://imgur.com/EYY2fjA

I've been banging my head at this issue for an entire day now and I just don't have any answers.

I built a basic ship to test out building SSTOs and becoming familiar for an eventual Laythe landing, and I discovered a great tip for building efficient SSTOs using Wing Incidence from u/F00FlGHTER, done by rotating the main wing and any canards 5 degrees positive to the fuselage. Upon doing this, my previously stable aircraft has a horrible tendency to nose dive hard without any SAS. The faster I go, the stronger the affect. This seems counter intuitive to what wing incidence is supposed to induce. Is this because of draggy Mk 2 parts?

Additionally, in trying many things, this has led me to notice that my original design, the one without any wing incidence, has a tendency to nose dive too. I've tried many different things to negate this affect and balance out my craft, such as swapping the fuselage for Mk 1 parts, shifting the radially mounted fuel tank stacks all up and down the fuselage, and moving all three wing components found per side all over the place to move my CoL around. I'm completely lost! On the other hand, SAS controls completely negate this issue and in fact hid it from me for a long time. Please help me with my frustrations.

I'm beyond my wits end here. This whole thing is making me wonder how large the fuel savings from wing incidence really is and if it's even worth it.

Does anyone have any insight?

Much appreciated!

edit: please note, I have the Correct CoL mod installed but have the stock CoL node left enabled for discussion. Also, craft is about 30 tons on the dot