I imagine that they'll be built on in the future, but at the moment they're great for grinding out points as well as for grinding out body armor. I've gotten a 520 all resist armor from them and a 5800 force shield armor from them.

They work particularly well with seeker quests which don't require very much productivity to conclude.

They're also very good for if you've got 10 minutes to do a run before you meet up with your guild or whatever.

I personally use them to level skills or test builds quite frequently.

Yeah but you could do the same with an expedition and increase your magic find for better drops. You can end an expedition on the first floor, which gives you more production then a mandate for them easy projects. Secondly if you run higher level expeditions the item level of the gear drops allowing for higher rolls on stats, where mandates cap it at the lowest possible.

I wondered the same thing, but then I realised that you can level a new character in Mandates instead of doing the story.

quite efficient and you get some production and stuff for your character-shared endgame, too!