Scales ....major, minor, wholetone, diminished, thirds, forths, etc...plus longtones, yes they're boring. Yes, they're necessary.

"Be all end all" overstates it a bit but I can't think of a single above intermediate player who can't make it through all their major scales. It is a fundamental. Scales do a lot of things for you. They help improve intonation because you hear the notes on your horn in context. They are a convenient way to deal with the technical challenges of whole and half step fingers just as triad exercises work on major and minor thirds ( and fourths, fifths and sixths if you work on them in various inversions) Their importance to improvisation is more theoretical than practical in my opinion. Scales with no skipped notes of more than 3 to 5 notes are relatively rare. They do help you fix keys and tonalitly in your head and that helps improvisation. Again I don't know ANY ever relatviely competent improvisors who can't get through at a bare minimum their major scales. Running your major scales in all twelve keys at a moderate tempo takes less than five minutes. Another 5 for arpeggios with some long tones and you have 15 minutes of practicing that you could do every day whether you "felt like it" or not through force of habit. In a few weeks you would be a better player just by having the horn in your face an extra 15 minutes a day.