I definitely prefer to keep it simple live. For a while I had this totally Spinal Tap rack with a Bogner Uberschall, a Marshall Valvestate, GCX, G-Major, about 5 pedals, wireless, and something else. Split my Mesa cab and had the GCX programmed to change all the pedals, amp channels, etc. It was KILLER sounding. But the rack with the heads/efx was like 5 feet tall and insane to take to a gig!
So I went the exact opposite direction. Now I'm doing this: Guitar > Wireless > Boss NS-2 > Framus Cobra
I completely hate pedals live - so if you want a bunch of effects, I can't recommend the GCX/G-Major combo enough. You can set the MIDI pedal up to change your amp channels too and it is really slick. G-Major sounds awesome...and the GCX is easy to program.
We play to a click live, and have a pretty small amount of clean or effected guitar stuff, so I pretty much put all that stuff on the backing tracks and play one channel the whole show so I can interact with the crowd better. Works for me because I don't have to worry about changing patches and crap....just hit the master volume switch for solos....