They do, but they do it in lower keys than the ones that are actively worth score / aren’t push keys. You’ll find a lot of the top “non meta” spec keys are actually the same people doing the top meta spec keys just a bit lower because they don’t want to blow a good key doing something less optimal.
Also for your shadow question, it’s a dps increase to maintain 4 extra VTs alongside Shadow Crash but for super long setup pulls you can maybe squeeze a 5th and maintain them all with void bolt until VF ends. In lower keys where you run DA instead of VF it’s 3-4 tops though.