I have a 1 year Adguard licence to give away. Any member that has more then 100 posts can reply to this thread and I will PM you the key. Edit: Key sent to tiger.
Ad blockers are good, if not essential. But some sites block you when they sense them, or ask you to disable them to work. So, in addition to an adblocker, you also need an adblocker-sensor-and-disabler-blocker. Opera has a good compromise solution. If you use its built-in adblocker, you can enable and disable it from the first page with a single click.
You could add own scripts in AdGuard, benefit of it is that it applies to system-wide apps + less browser resources, since TaperMonkey/GreasyMonkey are known to 'eat' a lot of ram, besides this they both send data back for 'statistics' (similar like adguards opt-in/out option). Last I've heard AdGuard will improve that feature and then you not need anything besides this, you also can easily debug scripts with adguards debug tool, which makes stuff a lot of easier compared to the browser debug module. I like AdGuard it's not perfect of course but they constantly working on it, it's worth the money. The idea is not bad.
AdGuard includes more as HOSTS blocking method, you can hide your Referer, IP and more. Hosts may also not blocks everything due the fact that MS own DNS mechanism could maybe bypassed (means you still could allow 'telemetry'). AdGuard act like an all-in-one solution to not blocks Browser ads, it blocks also Windows apps and apps you like to block like e.g Steam (steamwebhelper.exe) to 'protect' yourself, since such services collecting a lot of data. You not understand it because you never read any readme or something on AdGuard page, it's all explained. The FAQ also explains what exactly are the benefits compared to 'traditional' Browser extensions.
Maybe so, but I can block everything you outlined above including telemetry without the use of third party software.
You can't, some stuff is hardcoded (dnsapi.dll) or encrypted, then it not reaches hosts file (e.g. behind VPN/Proxy). AdGuard installs an own certificate to ensure each traffic goes over their cert. This is not possible with any Browser extension and a huge benefit over it. No, if you use AdGuard you not need that AdGuard addon, you can debug and add it via their integrated solutions. And no more is not better in this case because it slows down your web experience dramatically.