What does "without the option to get on the enemy side" mean? Will there be something special in tomorrow's TDM special mode?

In my opinion, hopper nerf did affected it's strength in battles , but it did not affect its dominance in golds catching that much. You can still catch golds easily with hopper. For me I have catched 92 golds in the past 3 days using hopper only with playing 2-3 hours per day just from mobile and it would have been more if I was playing from pc.