I'm inserting something from nearly 30 years of TF lore because nothing told me otherwise. I assume Prime is their leader, Megatron is bad and Blurr is a bit nippy unless told otherwise. I assumed the components didn't get on, and that this would be exacerbated by mixing in an Autobot, because that's how it's been before and I didn't know any better here.Err... the problems you seem to be having come not so much from you 'missing' something in RiD, as inserting things from the TFWiki that haven't appeared in the books.
Show me the bit in any IDW comic where it's established Devastator has trouble functioning because his component parts didn't get along. On the other hand, in the last issue of RiD there was a specific bit of exposition about how they *did* get along, and that's why Devastator is the only successful gestalt. It's not 'implied' - it's info-dumped!
What appears to you as an info dump just sounded like a contrivance to move the story along to me, given it happened a page before the big reveal of Prowlestator. I didn't get it was a throwback to something given in a previous IDW title which I hadn't read. Mostly because I hadn't read it.
Perhaps it's telling at this point that I can't tell contrived scripting and errors from accepted lore from previous IDW titles. Whether it's telling regarding the writing or me remains to be seen.
As you're not offended, which I'm happy about, then FYI starting a direct reply with 'Oh come on' is less effective than saying 'It turns out All Hail Megatron established that, in IDW, the combiner process is far more tight and effective, making Devastator a much more destructive weapon'. That single sentence would have saved me writing about 4 screens of TL;DR twaddle, working backwards to grasp why this key aspect of the story makes sense to you
