Personal opinion: you feel worse losing to Hogaak swinging for 8 each turn than you do losing to the faithless looting that filled your yard. I've never gotten feelbads from my opponent casting Brainstorm, even if it is too strong for Modern. I don't really care how constructed would handle it because WOTCs motivations are much different than my own.
I remove the cards that are (in my opinion) miserable on the board and let you keep the enablers that do lots of cool stuff for my environment. So, keep brainstorm, cut Bonfire.
My own subjective experience agrees with you. One of my favorite Cube games of all time went something like this, shortly after I'd switched to my cube's current midrange-only build:
T1: Fetch, Brainstorm
T2: Delver, Inquisition my opponent's two-drop
T3: Flip Delver, fetch, delve into Tasigur
T4: Angrath's Rampage my opponent's creature, Counterspell their next turn to time walk them
T5: Snapcaster the Counterspell to lock them out and deal lethal the next turn
My opponent and I were both a little bit slackjawed at this ridiculous curve-out, and neither of us had feelbads just because it was cool. But in a different situation, I could see the following ranking of negative emotions for my opponent:
Thoughtseize/Counterspell >>>> blind flip Delver > Snapcaster > Tasigur > Brainstorm.
Brainstorm feels totally negligible, because its game actions are hidden from my opponent, but it was arguably the best spell I cast. It enabled me to hit my 3 colors of mana, flip Delver, and fill the grave for Tasigur. And the best thing my deck did that game was get 2 free cards in the grave and great fixing with fetchlands. The enablers (and to a lesser extent, the interaction) were way more broken than the ham sandwiches I used to actually deal 20 damage.
But, like you say, it doesn't
feel that way, which is awesome. Moreover, some degree of above-rate enablers is actually beneficial for my format's goals, especially having good fixing and avoiding mana screw. So I totally agree it's a spectrum, even while I'm simultaneously watching out for negative play patterns that my enablers may be introducing.
Sorry, I simply mean that they ban the "wrong" cards sometimes so their money makers aren't affected. See Felidar Guardian vs Saheeli Rai.
No worries, I get it now
