"A carpenter knows their tools."

Quite, and they also know when to use them effectively.

I have no idea what "Autonomous System path" is but it looks like someone searching terms. An Autonomous System is a BGP thing.

You say "I'm forgetting" and I say - you don't have much skin in this game.

I've spent roughly 30 years getting to grips with this stuff.

I have helped designed some of the network hardware and software you may have used, I'm not sure how that's relevant. Pointless D measuring.

My point stands, which is: There are a lot of capabilities in these tools that should not be overlooked or dismissed.

In addition, reachability of the service is one of the things you would note with said tools as you work your way through the stack. You can even use MTR to see if the DNS server is holding port 53 open.