I'll pass it on to the Print team, I am sorry to hear about that. Personally I own an older Epson Photo Stylus Pro 1800, and at some point Epson handed off their driver support to the Apple Update team, and have had many problems ever since when updating and/or simply using the printer from any application. But it is probably I need to buy a newer printer (which is obviously great for the economy, bad for me).
Let me dig a little on that 'Filter' message. If Print As Image works, it sounds like a font issue. Just for my own info, are the fonts usually embedded in your PDF's or do you rely on system fonts?
Mark