That makes sense now. I figured it had to do with a hot pickup config and then I realized when it comes to Metal music at times people will drop a noise-gate in the middle of the chain to clean up the noise and cut the effects before it goes through the rest of the chain.
This was the exact reason. My reasoning was that I can remove a lot of pedals - Fuzz, Delay, Reverb, etc and just replace them with the MS3 and gate everything through the pedal. In this case now, I have lots of config options.
PEDALS -> MS3 -> PEDALS
PEDALS -> MS3 + PEDALS -> PEDALS
MS3
MS3 + PEDALS
PEDALS
You get the drift. And with the MS3 I have loop options too
ONBOARD - PEDALS - ONBOARD
ONBOARD
PEDALS - ONBOARD
So now I can shape the tune anyway I want and I also get the compactness of an FX pedal. Plus I can now loop stuff out of the pedal into the AMP And back in or do it in front or behind. And the other reason is that BOSS said they made this for both guitarists and bassists and I said well dang thats just what I was looking for. I also have an FS-7 (dont know if you've ever used one of these but they are superb) and it works with the MS3 or any Boss pedal plug product (RC3 Loop Station as an example) so I can do presets and use the FS7 to run the volume, gain, etc etc. and theres more expression pedal functionality too. I also don't lose the fact that I am essentially a person that tries a lot of pedals so I can always dump any of medals in the 3pt LOOP and then use them anyway I see fit.
The Spark Mini is super cheap and it sells out really fast. There is another buffer pedal made by JHS which is so much better but not as cheap as the Spark. I almost considered getting that over the Spark just because it keeps the tone up during the buffer process but in the end I chose the Spark for a boost instead. As for Reverb, you can't go wrong with either of those pedals. I have a HoF and I think its great but that Boss Reverb is just as good. Once I get the MS3 I think I'll retire the HoF just because I'll have reverb on the pedal itself.