That's a very interesting discussion from back in the early days of the layouts. I remember looking at CapsOff many years ago - it was what first inspired me to remap the caps lock key long before I started getting in to alternative layouts proper.

The nice thing about Asset is it tries to keep the most common keys on the same Qwerty finger at least. I found this idea quite attractive when first comparing the different layouts. Unfortunately Asset is rather flawed, as you say the J is a waste of a good space. Also it makes the same mistake as Colemak with its D and H in the middle. In one of my many experimentations in layout design, I once came up with a "better Asset"...

Q W U D P J L Y K ;
A S E T G H N I O R
  Z X C V B F M , . /

The idea would be to put U and E on the same column, as per Colemak. Apply the D>P>G rotation to get G back in its Qwerty place. And a few other changes such as getting J out of the way. Not entirely happy with the KO column though.

It is especially good if you are one of those who types C with the index finger, as it neatly avoids the CE bigram. In that case you get 1.6% same finger bigrams, nearly as good as Colemak's 1.5%. And all that for only 15 keys moved, many of which remain on same finger as Qwerty!

Maybe I'll write up my alternative layout designs at some point, but still, none of them are quite as good as Colemak plus DH mod.