I feel that if you went into Ward with the mindset of "well these powers just aren't cool/strong enough, so it sucks," you're not going to be in a position to see its strengths. It is not the power fantasy that Worm was, and I'm grateful for that.

The tinkers in his cluster worked together, shared tokens at night, exchanged power scans, and had significantly more resources and time to work on their devices than Rain did. Everything we know about how Tinkers work explains why they have an advantage there.

And yes, Victoria with significantly altered and more restrictive powers was initially weaker than in Worm. But she's significantly smarter and more creative about her powerset, and frankly I think if her forcefield did pop back as quickly as in Worm, the fights would have much less tension, and her relationship to her powers would have had much less depth imo.