Me? No, I was using trackers ever since. This is my story. I started making music with the first tracker ever.
Without anything else than I-blocks.
I don’t mute tracks, too. You will never find any Xs in my matrix. This would only worsen the overview. But duplicating a pattern doesn’t mean that you’re keeping the pattern’s content exactly as it is. Of course you change it according to your song buildup and/or song structure. You just need to duplicate a pattern to avoid laborious work, just like copying tracks. The pattern matrix allows you to work way quicker. Building a song is just getting simplified, no more and no less. As I said, it’s all about the overview. All you need for a quick buildup is this and of course this, too.