dempseyI don't know if it's leagues just caring less about HL, but it's always been weird to me how big the discrepancy between the HL and 6s whitelist is. Most of the reasons weapons are banned in 6s applies to HL, minus maybe the cowmangler since the damage reduction on engineer buildings is more important.
Only reason I can think of why bonk/parachute/cleaver aren't banned in HL is cause they're good dumb fun.
in hl sentries counter bonk (and cow mangler) and parachute isn't strong because of sniper class or heavy or pyro. parachute is good during a sack wave though
cleaver is the best example of a weapon that by 6s standards is OP in highlander, but it's not banned because it's not nearly as oppressive as it probably is in 6s. having 2 scouts capable of spamming cleaver sounds genuinely awful while 1 scout doing it is occasionally really annoying to one player