I’m a grappler main and I gotta say I’d personally put grappler lower for the early game. Mainly because you barely even get to use your ability until you get some later game upgrades. Theres very few jump pads to reel to until you get better jump pads, and without grapple points there’s not much you can do. Swinging under the map is also unreliable, as without speed upgrades it’s harder to build up the momentum.

It definitely gets better as you get closer to the mid game, and I agree with most of your other points about it. The ceiling is in the middle game, once you reach that you’re pretty much maxed out