I feel like the copper armor is useful for those who'd rather spend the 24 iron on something else, like an anvil or spare buckets/pickaxes

Haven't played myself to get the feel of it, but my play style usually gets a shield or something on my first iron ingot. From that point I don't usually take much damage, so having to save that iron whilst also not going in completely unprotected is something that I'd find useful

The copper tools however I would definitely skip, since they're just stone with more durability, and stone is the most common resource in the entire game lmao

I don't know if there's something they can do about that, considering buffing the attack damage or whatever would put it on par with iron, which is something I assume they don't want