I don't really want a full IDE. I basically want sublime + minimal features to help me debug more quickly. I mostly want a text editor that gets out of my way, but can whip out more powerful tools (within reason) when I need them.

Vim/nano/emacs can certainly pull out power, but grokking them on as deep a level as sublime/atom/vscode requires a steep curve (and is complementary anyway).

Something full like VS is too heavy for me personally. I rarely use 80% of the features, and the ones I do want tend to be more complex in the more powerful IDEs when maybe I only need some simple version.

I can certainly imagine a different working environment where I would find the IDE tooling much more valuable, but it's not what I work on now.

VS code being a worse IDE is, for me, a feature.

You _briefly_ used both of these and found JetBrains to be _personally_ better, then follow up by asking why not just use a "good IDE?"

The simplest response with a similar level of effort is - I disagree with you and find VS Code to be an effective IDE.