The issues in 10.12.x get fixed with 10.13, but 10.13 has the same amount of different issues, so it’s a wash. There’s no stable version anymore.
I'm still running El Capitan, and not having any issues.
Admittedly, I would have upgraded had my mac been eligible, because I'm just that sort of person, but there's nothing in Sierra or High Sierra that would make a meaningful difference to me.
If there was no yearly release deadline, and the project were resourced identically, my experience points to there being even fewer releases of identical quality.
Deadlines needed.
Simply more / better QA resources required.
The best strategy seems to be to treat the current release as a beta, and hang back at least one release. If you upgrade to 10.(n-1) just before 10.n is released, you're on a release that's had about two years to mature. Though I skipped Yosemite entirely.