Those outer ring powers are really good but the reason I personally always use the astral tadpole is the free flight on everyone.
Fly to get around the battlefield is stupidly overpowered especially if all your guys have it. It basically doubles your movement as soon as you get it since fly is 60 ft of movement.
Honor mode is one single save, permanent death. You can’t go back once you make a decision. It’s the reason you should know exactly how you’re planning on running honor mode so you don’t make mistakes that bork your save file or kill you outright (taunting Vlaakith is one way to kill yourself via dialog). I died on my first honor attempt due to stupidity so take my warning to heart. My second run was much more careful and now I have the golden dice.
What gift? Im struggling to think of anything at the end of act 2 that is given to Tav.
Edit: I thought some more on it, do you mean the astral gift? If thats the gift you took then you could play it like this: Emp used his persuasion to convince you to take the gift. You realized it was a trap and now you will use those powers to betray Emp. Free the person in the bubble and free yourself from the ghaik. You are restored to humanity if the BBEG dies. I tried to be mostly spoiler free in case you hadn’t played through fully already.