Concludedi feel most of these changes suck due to utility creep clownery over 10 yrs (bonk, razorback, gru, base jumper) and unlock oversaturation.
the heart of most of these items gets lost through repeated attempts at convoluted balancing (amby, bonk, atomizer, etc etc). the wordage on these new changes is so dense and cluttered. meanwhile we have gunboats : -60% self damage at the cost of no shotgun.
I'm late to respond to this, but I think this is an interesting point. Although I agree items have strayed from their original vision, I would argue that this is not a bad thing, and that the heart of an item is not something that's fixed at the start, but rather something that's continually redefined. It's not an actual thing, it's just based on perspective. Consider, for example, someone who's just picked up the game - what they understand to be the essence of an item such as Bonk is what it is now. So, I would say the evolution of an item's underlying concept is fine, and the light-hearted character of TF2 definitely facilitates weirder ideas.
That being said, I don't have anything against your point of these changes being convoluted - definitely more elegant alterations would be good, but it shouldn't matter if these alterations are fundamentally significant or not.