Yep, that's a pretty rough go of it. Cutting Pallas' and spell boost from CDM seems particularly painful!
I agree that Dearly Departed is (at best) super niche. I think we both watched @copperpitch use it to great effect in a couple of games on stream. Not sure how long that would keep up. Even without the transform, Dearly could be a game-winner by stopping that critical card from dropping even for a turn, but what do you cut just for that small chance?
Copper did use it well but I rarely was ahead enough to be able to play Dearly, maybe it was bad matchups or bad draws. Running 1 Dearly is definitely the better plan. You also see how bad metamorph is.