I agree that this is, at least personally, a reason I find approval and score-based voting a bit distasteful. Nevertheless, even in their tactical forms, they still perform better than instant runoff in practice. Fortunately, we don’t need to choose between the two: Condorcet voting systems are generally just as resistant to tactical voting as IRV, and give far better results from both a utilitarian and majoritarian perspective. See my previous post for a detailed comparison.