"to make up for the nerf, and to further make a double Chapel opening desirable, you could add some utility that makes the card useful when you've trashed down and are low on economy, and hey, it'd be pretty cool if it was still useful when you're getting your engine going. Since it trashes 2 cards, it would make sense if you could choose between that, and getting +$2, or +2 cards. But now it's pretty powerful already so the price should probably be increased to $3."
I see what you did there! ;P
I understand the idea that cost isn't a function of power, mainly. But still, opening both with chapel and a 5 is certainly much better than opening a chapel priced at 3 and then getting a 4, right? But sure, then a 5/2 split would open with chapel and nothing in some instances, and the variance problem would still be an issue. I think making chapel just trash a maximum of say 1 or 2 victory cards/turn would be a good tweak which makes for less variance.
But yeah in my newbie mindset, where to me it seems that hitting three estates with it while the other person misses the reshuffle or gets chapel + a 5 card and three coppers in the same shuffle is really just far behind in that game. But yeah I'm more inclined toward making weaker cards stronger and more interesting (replacing thief with noble brigand in all games, for example) so that big money becomes less attractive. But if the community thinks it's such a well-balanced game, wouldn't there be less consensus in for example the Qvist rankings concerning the cards, like year after year? And I'm not talking about that sort of faux balance which is supported by the argument "well if the card is so powerful so what, everyone has access to it!"