But is it really that bad to vote some small 3rd Party?

Not at all, 0%. But there's an order of operations. Work for ranked choice voting, work for outcomes on a smaller scale where a third party can gain functioning influence, work to pressure the Democrats to back away from some of their more fascist-y policies (which sometimes involves wielding threats of voting in particular ways that they might not like), work for better outcomes in ways which don't involve politicians at all.

All of those sound great to me. Working for a system in which things can exist that aren't our current displeasing duopoly actually sounds like a critical part of making the whole system work again. But choosing to have 0 influence on an important (crucial) outcome, risking a total catastrophe, because you wish something better existed, seems pretty foolish in comparison to actually working to make that better thing exist for real (while avoiding catastrophe in the meantime).