At some point last year (maybe 2 years ago) my node was saturating my upload to the point where normal web browsing would not function smoothly. I had to reduce max connections (to around 20) in order to continue supporting the network. I guess a gimped node is better than none at all.
I'm not sure your concept of "gimped" makes any sense.
20 inbound connections is enough to broadcast to the entire network and then some in 3 hops.
Why is it "gimped" to not completely saturate your uplink 24/7 without any QoS measures in place?