I both love and hate awk -- on the one hand, it provides the same/similar functionality of similar tools (sed, grep, cut, etc); but it is a bit of a bear and can be pretty slow.

If you need more "complex" tasks done what would be cumbersome with the rest of the standard tooling, and performance is a non-issue, awk/gawk can probably get it done.

Though, I too am trying to use it as little as possible in scripts. I think multiple subshells/pipes is still better than awk in some cases. Syntax also leaves a lot to be desired...