> What does “far better tooling” mean exactly

It means that git invented a bunch of new jargon and ideas that confuses people exposed to it for the first time, where hg's usage metaphor hews closer to the received wisdom of people coming from stuff like subversion and perforce.

It's true that git's ad hoc command line UI isn't exactly it's greatest strength. But given the complexity of the design space here that's a pretty weak argument IMHO. The two weeks it takes to get the basic git workflow into your muscle memory pale in comparison to the years it'll take you to be good at bisection and tree maintainership.

It's also sort of a wrong argument in the modern world. People new to git have extensive assistive technologies available. There is, after all, no HgHub out there.