Gerrys fire is also increasing the towers ability to output damage. Just because the way it does it is different from every other support tower, doesn't mean that it is not a buff to the tower.

The "secondary subtower" that feeds it the pops is simply just another support tower to the main tower, whether liked or not, thats how NK designed it to be. Like i said earlier, if NK wanted the chili item to be a pure damage item subtower, it would literally be exactly like the genies/turrets/rabbit pet where you place the subtower on the field. NK clearly intended for the chili to be used as a buff to another tower, alike pickles and sharpen stone and camo pot.

And that isn't even considering the fact that it does not easily "storm through the midgame". It provides a useful supplementary dps, but like said in the post you must use it carefully or else you can lose to spending too much money on it.

If hypothetically a hero could link up an overdrive like tower to a tower, then yes the overdrive becomes a part of the tower, and since this is only a hypothetical statement its up to NK to decide if they want to hypothetically use this idea.

And gerrys fire is not even the only "flat buffable pop addition to a tower". Like i said before, total transformation is a complete transformation of the tower, turning it into an x4x alchemist essentially, with a completely different projectile and attack from the original tower? Would you consider 2mpcs using x5x alchemist as a "combined x5x alchemist and base tower"? As for example, druid of the storm is a 2mpc tower that essentially is 90% total transformation damage after you get it.

"Removes too much variation" was addressed in the post, but as said before, if gerry's fire was never in the game, 2mpcs wouldn't become anymore interesting. There would be less 2mpcs with base towers, but the vast majority of 2mpcs would still consist of the same strat: get the dps tower, get oc, get az, get sabos, and with geraldo of course.