> it seems like Approval voting just moves the spoiler effect into how people vote

that's orthogonal. ranked voting methods already have (arguably more severe) response to strategic voting AND ALSO can fail IIA even with no strategy applied, just by changing an irrelevant alternative.

> Personally I think the possibilities of circular ties under Ranked Pairs is oversold.

what does that even mean? we have VSE figures that measure the combined effect of all failures, including when the Condorcet winner isn't the favorite candidate of the electorate (not the social utility maximizer). https://electionscience.github.io/vse-sim/vse-graph.html

that's not under or oversold, it's just measured performance.