A language server doesn't have to involve live reloading, and normally doesn't? I feel like these are two orthogonal concerns. A language server is used for things like autocomplete and error highlighting.

I don't like them in principle because I believe the language should be more fully integrated with the IDE (like Eclipse does), but they do work, are a step up from syntax highlighting, and are practically a requirement if you have an NxM matrix of languages and IDEs.