If it makes a difference in their particular situation, great. I even did say that if they need the HP, they can equip that weapon. Although when I asked 'where would you need the HP', that wasn't rhetorical. That was a request for more details on the situation; which fights/what kamihime are available/stats/etc. etc. My SSR-less wind team has less base HP, only has +HP through Kyuuki bow, probably has less assault, and probably has higher base atk. I picked up 3 ori from Yggdrasil GO (I didn't do the win in 15 turns or all 7 survive missions).

Now for the part where I say 'defender only trash'? Ok, that's a habit of mine dating back to launch. I'm fairly sure that I'm literally the only one who uses that exact phrasing on this forum. If you've seen an unregistered say that since launch, that's me.
Why did I start saying that? There are two halves to it. The first is that obviously I value raising assault more than raising just HP. The other half is thinking about resource allocation. Even back then I already knew that I'd never use a defender only weapon in a serious lategame grid, so it was a question of how much, if any, time/gems/weapons into skill leveling the things. This being before guerilla quests and before my grids hit the point where new SR weapons are superfluous, skill leveling for me was a lot more troublesome. So it was a matter of investing for short term vs long term gains. I concluded that working on defender only trash wasn't worth it for me at all. I also capped leveling my SR's to 12, for that matter.