Yes, it's always safer and better to use email validation tools. We've experienced a few bounces ourselves.
It also depends on the email providers. For example, even when Apollo marks an email as 'Valid,' we've still encountered a lot of bounces
Pratik L. I see you're using Clay waterfall enrichment - this already includes a separate verification step (with Zerobounce by default I think)
Ankit S. true for many but some are great (eg. Findymail).