I can understand that logic and agree with it but only to a certain extent. To me it begs the question, what's the point of having a scorpion tail if you can't use it how nature intended it to be used to stab and poison? What's the point of having wings if you can't use them to fly? Why do all the enemies get to have these advantages but for us they're simply just props?You see, TF is a fetish, same as any other; we're not going to give you special combat abilities for being the biggest broodmare or having the most anal sex in Savarra. If we mechanically reward certain TFs, then we're inherently punishing you for NOT taking the most optimal transformation path for your build -- meaning that you're disadvantaging yourself for playing the character you actually WANT to play. That's awful game design.
I really don't think there would be a balancing issue in CoC2 considering we already have a hard limit on the number of abilities can have in combat, a hard limit on their uses in battle, a hard limit in their duration, and a recharge rate. We could be a chimera all we want, but we will always be limited to one TF perk slot (at will or maybe a recharge slot) and there's no way to get around that hard cap unless we mod the game which I know you've said hell no to.
I would say that's WAY more balanced then what TiTs does considering you have NO limit on the abilities you can have in combat and the majority of them have no use limit or cool down and basically allows you become this unstoppable tank and crushing everything in your path. I also remember CoC1 TF perks being fuck busted for having the same problems, there was no use limit or limit to the amount you could have in combat.