What do you 3D texture artists out there use to texture objects given their mesh and UVs?
I tried blender but frankly it’s just annoying and feels limiting.
Especially for things like easily masking certain vertex groups, layering, and painting in the 3D viewport at a constant resolution and not having the camera influence it(very annoying).
Any workflows you guys recommend or software?
I’ve heard substance painter is good?
I’d recommend either substance painter or photoshop.
Photoshop, however my subscription ran out so now I just hand paint everything in Blender 
There are plenty of texture workflows out there, it all really depends on your preference, I wouldn’t say there is one absolutely better than another in every regard. Some (or most) 3D apps come with their own texturing tools which is sometimes helpful because you’ll be used to the controls for that software if that’s what you use to do modeling, etc.
Substance Painter is pretty good, it has a huge feature list and is great at procedural texturing, and it’s very easy to use for a beginner too. I believe there is some kind of student/trial option available on the website so you don’t need to fork out hundreds of dollars right away. There are others too, like ZBrush, Photoshop, MudBox, 3D Coat. All of which have their own neat features.