This is an old topic, but the problem with this feat is still here...that it's useless. Yes you can get some rare add-ons, but it's not worth the feat point for minor convenience.
It's much better than that.
First, when you disassemble and reassemble something, it's fixed. That means its value, if you're selling it, can jump by potentially a huge amount.
Second, when you disassemble something like, say, a 5mm Hawker with a XM, you can put that on a .44 or a 8.6 Steel Cat and drastically increase the value of that XM. Since the best-selling items have an increasing value multiplier based on the number of attached mods, going from a cheap crappy frame with 1 mod to an expensive frame with 2 mods is a huge deal.
Third, many of the items that you're really interested in don't have a quality value and don't suffer from the 10% hit.
Fourth, there may be a way to mitigate that 10% on the way.
Disassemble is the one feat that can most significantly increase the amount of money in the game. If you're playing on the easier difficulty levels, that doesn't matter to you, but on Hard or DOMINATING, the economy is tweaked so that there's not infinite money any more. Since there are, at a minimum, three big money sinks in the game, it can be quite nice to be able to afford all the optional stuff. So, in effect, Disassemble makes opportunities available that a player otherwise wouldn't have. That's a big impact for a single feat.
The feat most certainly isn't dead; it's merely specialized. That's just fine.
Well I see your points, but I can't agree to many of them.
1)The repair kits are quite easy to craft, since there are a lot cheap melee weapons to scrap/ leather armors to make and scrap. Plus even if it's fixed, the losing of 10% quality makes a big dent in final price for item.
2)Add-ons are the only things, that this feat is good for, but rare ones you want use for yourself and to take this feat for the useless ones for recraft and sale is a bit of a waste.
3)Well this is true, but if you are somewhat lucky you can buy and hoard many of them to craft future items. So in this case again this feat is lacking.
4)Not sure, what are you talking about? Is it skinner/clother feats bonuses?
I prefer to play on standard mode in any game, since this is the original setting for the game, or how the game supposed to be played. Inflated difficulty is just a broken design/waste of time usually. There are exceptions, but usually it's like this. And so skills/feats/perks/etc should be balanced around standard mode.
I still don't see the reason, why this feat can't give 100% items back. Since this game has one of the most stupidest designs for add-ons I ever saw. Why scope/ammo mag/bipod can't be taken off/put on on a built gun? They are NOT the main part of the gun, so you don't need to disassemble it to change/move/remove/etc them. So if this style is coded in game at least give us ability to do such simple things, that present as base in other games....
If you say, that it can be abused to repair for free - make it, that you can disassemble ONLY fully repaired ones.