It's a nagle set. The guy has made a habit of trying to do things for the sake of doing them rather than doing them because they'd be fun to play. It's also why a lot of his sets involve either incredibly overpowered things or incredibly weak power level sets (not caring about if its fun or not results in OP things when the "i want to do this cool thing" is good and underpowered when "i want to do this cool thing" is bad.

Lead designs: worldwake (jace, wanted a 4 ability walker), new phyrexia (phyrexian mana), return to ravnica (pack rat), born (extremely weak), fate reforged (extremely weak with a couple of ridiculous bombs for limited like citadel seige and ugin).

I wouldn't say it's jumped the shark. I'd just say "the dude running the show this set has a habit of wanting to do weird things, and found another weird thing to do".

Either the ability will be irrelevant or will be massively OP. Time will tell. I'm more worried about the tribute mechanic personally. The patrons cost a lot and needed specific creatures and could never really be free. These creatures can use anything and can be free. Magic history has proven "alternative casting costs that make things essentially free are usually too strong" (hi phyrexian mana again), but we'll see