Torrents yes, always VPN. If you’re doing the debrid route, not required but personally I still do.
I am a big fan of mullvad VPN as they take no info from you to create an account. Can pay with crypto. No name, email or anything tied to their service. Used proton, nord and pia in the past.
Pretty much the same here. the storage to quality ratio isn’t a big enough difference to make it worth it to me for anything over 1080. 720p is noticable but I’ll still use it no problem.