message queues versus direct api calls for async tasks

Hey everyone, I've been wrestling with how to best handle asynchronous tasks in our system. We're seeing increased load and some background jobs are starting to impact the responsiveness of our core APIs. My current thought is to use a message queue like RabbitMQ or Kafka for these background jobs. But, for some simpler async tasks, a direct API call to a dedicated worker service might seem simpler initially. What are your thoughts on when a message queue is definitely overkill versus when it's essential for decoupling and resilience, compared to just firing off an async API call?