Is "survival mode" at the bubble actually costing us overall EV?

Hi everyone,
I’ve been analyzing several bubble scenarios in micro/low-stakes MTTs lately.
A lot of strategy threads emphasize stalling or tightening up to secure the min-cash, especially when playing short-stacked (under 12-15 BB). However, I often notice that playing purely not to bust leaves us with a micro-stack right after the bubble bursts, giving us almost zero fold equity to make a real run for the final table.
For those grinding micro MTTs:
Do you strictly follow ICM guidelines and fold marginal spots (like AJs or 88 in late position) to lock in the cash?
Or do you prefer taking slightly higher-risk +\text{EV} spots right before the bubble to build a stack that can actually target the top 3 payouts?
Curious to hear how you balance min-cash security versus playing for the win!

It depends on a lot of factors, it’s very dynamic, everything changes very fast and tournaments have different formats, generally you wanna steal in late positions and call less especially vs nits.

In MTT all the money are at the final table, especially at top 3 position, you should make high variance , but still +EV decisions during ICM stage, so you can have some playable stack in order to compete for the higher positions.

Generally you wanna use some soft like HRC to calculate ranges in 10-20bb during bubble in the tournaments you’re playing in, and then adapt those ranges to field, if some 5% vpip guy pushes you should probable fold a lot more than GTO says etc.