I agree. People seem to confuse expanding her mermaid repertoire as 'keeping the same weapon and skillset in awakening too', which is not true. She could use even her gun with some new mermaid skills, or a real harpoon or spear. Now she went from human, to mermaid, to human? Why? 
I would've loved a trident. She could summon ghost ships or something, or do other cool water magic stuff. She could still have her otters, surfing on the waves she created and stuff. Or holding enemies in place with nets or things like that. Or heck, still as backup fire just like now.

This current direction is more what I expected for the inevitable male pirate people will be asking for.

She's not a true gunner either like some people wanted. It seems like she misses out on ticking many of the potential boxes various people would have liked her to tick. Now... to me, she looks good doing these skills and she is relatively fun to play even in awa, but it's very very disappointing how they ditched mermaid... since I've been wanting a mermaid class since 2016, especially.

And let's talk about how, in the water, she's not a proper mermaid at all? She's more a mermaid in pre-awa stance on land than in the water. She shifts in and out of mermaid form instead of staying in it, only under water, gets stranded in the water like any other human class after just a tiny bit further travel....
The least they could do is give her infinite swim stamina, like hash has for desert running. My mermaid should be a mermaid in the water, come on... I was hoping the awakening would buff these things as she'd get more used to her mermaid form and 'awaken' fully to them. But nope.

I like the otters, but they could still have been a thing with a different awakening kit, so this point is moot. I would love to see papu's too, they're even cuter.

Not the point. Though it's good succession is a thing now, or I would've hated things even more than the ranger awakening forcing me to play how i didnt want to. But they could (and in my opinion should) have definitely either swapped awakening and succ, or gone with more mermaid skills in awa. The whole story surrounding her is about her being part mermaid because of her mother, etc. To ditch that for an awakening is just folley imo.
Plus she had the chance to be truly unique. Now she's just another human, but can pew pew.

There's a hybrid between a mermaid and a human. :D Two in one.