Yes they do carry severe penalties that make them a poor choice for many activities. However, no one is forcing anyone to use them, and they are (sometimes) duseful for travel ships, travel fits, and haulers. So, I’m not quite sure I understand your argument. Like, I’m not advocating that anyone fit them to their FW PvP fits or anything. I don’t know.
Warpstabs are also very useful for thief fits. 
There is no dice roll about the number of points the cloaky campers in system have, I can look up their fit.
Same for the scouts that are ahead of fleets here. I may have enough time to react when I see a fleet, but those scouts can pop anywhere even if I have eyes on the other side. They’re fast. And also usually have scram+point or double scram.
That means I’m pretty safe in my Epithal with 3 or 4 wcs!
Why would you give someone a shot at you when you can avoid them entirely?
If I’d want to avoid them entirely I wouldn’t be able to pick up my PI when I need to.
It’s very rare to have no cloaky threats in system and they occasionally uncloak on top of you while aligning out of a gate. 9-10s align time versus 2-3s lock time without uncloak delay, there’s not much you can do to avoid getting pointed if you want to fly something that isn’t a fast aligning frigate.
Mwd cloak trick could help at gates, but won’t do a thing at the customs office. Luckily with wcs you aren’t immediately dead when pointed, only if they have brought faction scrams or multiple bombers. I have yet to see that happen though. 
Assuming you correctly identify all players involved, nobody brings any friends you didn’t account for, and nobody ever changes their fit. So yes, you are rolling the dice by relying on WCS.
Just wondering, do you only undock when you are 100% certain you will survive?
WCS aren’t any more ‘random’ than other defence mechanics. Putting tank on the ship will help me only if people happen to have not enough dps to kill me before I get away, align time only helps if it helps me warp off just before they have me locked, or a more extreme example: ECM bursts and ECM drones litterally roll a dice to see if I can get away. WCS are much more reliable than some of those if you have the right intel.
And if you have the wrong intel, you die. Oh well, better luck next time.
I fit my ships to have a good chance of survival. Not to be 100% immune to dying. And warp core stabs are pretty good for that in some situations.
This is not true. Align time helps you warp off before getting pointed but it also makes your travel times faster when you aren’t attacked. WCS do absolutely nothing for you outside of the rare situation where you fail to avoid an attack and they don’t bring enough points to kill you anyway. And when any serious gatecamp is bringing bubbles, sensor boosted HICs, etc, WCS aren’t going to do very much for you.
I’m not fitting WCS to survive serious gatecamps. I’m fitting WCS to survive getting tackled by the numerous cloaky bombers around in our space, or the regular scouts ahead of their fleets.
Obviously I’m not going to try jump my warp core stabbed Epithal through a gate camp.
Just wondering, what’s the point you’re trying to make?
I personally like how warp core stabilizers work in this game, they’re useful in certain situations, bad in others and have clear counterplay options. Maybe they could get another negative to combat stats (minus damage %) to make them even less viable option for a fighting/ratting fit, but as a non-combat defensive module they’re fine as they are.
The point is that the rare scenarios where WCS are useful are vastly outweighed by the scenarios where WCS make your ship less effective and do nothing to protect you, and the only people using them are clueless newbies and/or bad players who hope that WCS can bail them out when they make stupid decisions and let threats into tackle range. Removing them from the game would remove the newbie trap and have the nice side effect of making bad players lose more ships when they do stupid things.
As I have presented scenarios where the positives of the WCS vastly outweigh the negatives and do a lot to protect me, and I’m neither a newbie nor a bad player, I’m starting to suspect you may dislike these modules for a different reason.
Did people escape your tackle too many times due to these, perhaps?
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Are you unable to understand the phrase “vastly outweighed by”? Your anecdote of using WCS to survive does not change the fact that it’s a rare scenario compared to the ones where WCS do nothing but make your ship worse and are not the correct fitting choice.
There are many situations where fitting a module makes your ship worse and is not the correct fitting choice. It’s up to players to make the correct choice.
And sometimes, warp core stabilizers are the correct choice.
And in the vast majority of cases they aren’t. They’re a newbie trap module that should not exist.
They are no more a newbie trap module than for example cargo expanders.
So many newbies fit cargo expanders on their haulers to make themselves a bigger gank target with less EHP. Yet these modules can actually be used well when people make correct fitting choices.
Same for warp core stabilizers.
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Warp core stabilizers are interesting not because I would ever fit them - but because I don’t know how many some dumb miner might have fitted. It affects how I would fit my gank ship and how many scrams I would use, versus sensor boosters, or even webs. Sure, fitting them is dumb, but it is important to include some dumb modules in the game.
Not at all the same.
Cargo expanders have some legitimate use and can make a ship better in its intended role. Like all modules they are obviously not a 100% automatic choice but they do work. For example, outside of highsec there is no such thing as being a bigger gank target because every ship is a gank target.
WCS have effectively no legitimate use. In the vast majority of cases they are the clearly wrong fitting choice and the only people using them are clueless newbies (who don’t know any better) and incompetent players who need a “get out of jail free” card because they’re too lazy and/or stupid to use more effective defensive tools.
This.
A good mining fit won’t fit any warp core stabilizers, but if warp core stabilizers didn’t exist, anyone going after miners would only need to fit only one warp disruptor on their ship to keep people from warping away.
Warp core stabilizers allow an arms race where smart miners can take advantage of the gankers who only bring one point. But it will mess up their lock time, yield and defences.
Choices, optimisation, chances. Take away warp core stabilizers and all anyone would ever need is 1 single warp disruptor.
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No, because the smart miners are never getting locked in the first place. WCS in this scenario only protect the stupid miners who let a gank ship get into position to attack because there’s a chance the gank ship might only have one point.
Please explain how a smart miner should not get locked when a cloaky bomber is in system. They can uncloak and lock your ship in 2 seconds and your ship cannot be aligned all the time.
By having an insta-lock frigate/destroyer sitting next to them, ensuring that if the bomber ever decloaks it will promptly explode and even if it kills the miner first it’s still a losing trade for the bomber pilot.
Oh so now the miner is supposed to multibox or have other people babysit him, rather than equip a ‘useless’ module?
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