Can someone please explain the recent Tick population boom??

So I don't know if it's just me but for the past few weeks it seems like Tick has been making a huge resurgence almost everywhere, probably ever since his damage buff. I see a bunch of NPCs going Tick in basically every mode including Gem Grab and Brawl Ball, and the part that gets me is that 90% of them are running Mine Mania and Automatic Reload instead of Last Hurrah and Well Oiled going by their health regeneration speed. And they almost always get negative K/Ds. I for the life of me cannot figure out when this paradigm shift occured, but I really don't think a damage buff is enough to justify him being used in more aggressive gamemodes, especially with the worse SP and gadget. Then again I'm not too plugged into the BS content sphere. Did some kids' content creator make a video saying that Tick is actually super underrated with Mine Mania and so now everyone's trying to use him now, or am I just out of the loop and something about Tick actually has changed his preferred build? Or is this all just me and I'm the only one this is happening to? Please let me know if you guys are noticing this too, cause