I’ve started using the Level Meter (under Beta in the store) liberally while setting up boards. It has been helpful to get a ‘better than nothing’ understanding of what the levels are like across the board, which plugins are changing the levels, and where I was losing headroom. Based on reading through other threads about gain staging, I’ve been arbitrarily trying to keep the signal between -18 to -10 across the board for regular to aggressive strumming.
I use the looper in front during building to keep a rhythm progression repeating so I can work on cutting and boosting with the EQ.