personally i find the fx to be quite good. it's very useful to learn the hidden functions of each effect. for example setting the delay to freeze mode friggin kicks ass for doing live glitch-stutter mayhem, but u have to know that send=0 triggers the effect. also if yr doing delay time modulation, it is important to choose either tape or digital style emulation... if u want pitching, slewed fx, u need tape mode, if u want stepped delay time changes u want tape mode off.
the compressor, honestly, is excellent, but there's a trick to using it. turn the RMS knob in the sub-menu all the way up. it is now compressing peaks instead of RMS. no doubt if your having trouble getting predictable results out of the compressor, you have it set to RMS compression, which is not what most of us want
that said i would give any thing for a gain reduction meter...
i do wish you could place delays and verbs pre-filter. i like to use lots of feedback and a filter helps control some of the rogue frequencies of a feedback blast.
honestly, based on the hardware layout, i doubt we're gonna get more fx slots, so you'll wanna learn to deal with what's offered, hehe. i agree w/ someone elses statements about a filter pre-fx for every channel... but i just dont see room on the AMP or LFO pages for this to happen, unless all the filter setting are hidden in the LFO sub-menu.
the EQ's, by the way, are great, quite transparent and very surgical. in case you don't know this, almost NO digital EQ on earth short of UAD et al will sound good with BOOSTS... so try just *cutting* w/ the EQ. it's a great surgery tool. the high-pass of the filter is also a good EQ/surgery tool, and if all u need is a DC/low-end filter, you have that function built into the filter (try switching hi-pass to 24db!)
the modulation fx are fine, they are rich and high quality, tho i agree they are not very "wet"... they're more for nice stereo processing. if u want a really wet sounding modulation effect, use the Delay effect, LFO modulating delay time, high feedback, send set low, etc.
the reverb is great too, but i wish it had dry vs wet separate level controls instead of just a Mix knob. i lose a lot of gain with full mix verb, it's tough to get a full drone out of it, would be nice if it had some built in gain.
my general view towards the fx is that they are meant as little jack-knife tools more than radical sound destruction processors. the sound destruction happens with slicing, plocks, crazy scene actions, rate and pitch modulation, LFO's, etc... the fx are just there to help u get it to sound "right".... MHO, YMMV.