But have you played any outdoor daylight gigs with the Helix? Or some larger stages with intense lightning? I have, and on one gig the bass player (also a pretty decent guitarist still using an AX8 here and there) was looking at me asking whether the Helix was even switched on.
I have some pics somewhere - it's beyond belief.
No idea about how well (or not well) the FM3 or QC would do, but please give me displays and switch LEDs from someone actually knowing what their doing, such as Boss. The GT-1000 stays completely visible, even in direct sunlight. I happily do without fancy colors.
There's some other pretty bad hardware issues coming along with the Helix, too. The joystick makes zero sense in terms of functionality and it's breaking often (no wonder in case you constantly apply friction in 7 possible directions on a non-military-grade piece of electronic gear), the XLR output can't deal with phantom power (WTF? I mean, did they even test this at all?) and the switches aren't something worth writing home about either, lots of folks have broken ones. At one point in time (shortly after I bought mine), I knew 7 Helix owner in person (we once even had a little gathering over here), 5 of them with units that had been serviced already, 2 of them even twice (mine had to have the tap tempo switch repaired, too).
In terms of latency, the Helix interface is just the worst of them all. Which is a shame as the USB routing options are really nice.
And as far as things such as global blocks go, I know many people don't care - but very often that also seems to be because they simply can't imagine what they could be used for and how they could somehow efficiently improve the experience beyond some obvious things.
I know, all that reads like me hating Line 6 or so - but I don't. I'm just quite dissapointed that what could've been at least close to perfect turned out to be something that I simply had to sell.