> Are class components really on the down & out?

In the popular sense, they've been on the down and out for years now.

> It turned in to a bit of a mess until I went for a refactor into classes and everything became much more clear.

in my experience, once the logic starts to become complex, you need to develop custom hooks so that a given component stays readable.

The hooks paradigm is a lot harder once you get past the basics, but I wouldn't go back for reasons I could articulate if there's any interest.