I hadn't intended to do a 90 degree angle pipe, but just to explore all options the first version I made was one and it immediately reinforced that it wasn't what I wanted to to do.
These two viewpoints are exactly why I wanted to bring it to the community, as I can understand arguments for both sides. So I spent the last few minutes prepping the two positions and wanted to show them here.
So first is the centered position:
Then the offset position:
After having done that I'm leaning a bit more toward the offset position, as Ith you bring up a good point that any sort of inset can be achieved with slabs.