Sorry, but velocity triggered bends don't do it for me. How loud you want the note is independent of whether you need a bend or not (ever bent a quiet note?).

Ditto for pedal or switch based bends. You need to be able to bend up OR down, depending on circumstance, and you need to be able to bend different intervals, at different rates. Sometimes you need a little pitch 'blip' sometimes you need a screaming wind up to a target note over a bar...

Trust me on this one... I am a pitch bend freak! Wheels, levers (I do like the Roland system, it's only drawback is you can't leave the modulation UP. There are plenty of other ways of achieving this, though), pitch strips (LOVE my KX5 and the strips on my Kurzweil). When playing anything other than piano and non pitch moving sounds, I play at least half the time with my LH glued to the lever! It's the only way to get real horn string and wind inflections, IMO...

As to the Chord Sequencer...

Sadly, Roland is not capable of syncing the SMF and arranger sections. You CAN do it this way with practice, but timing is critical. I worked all this out quite a while ago. But it doesn't address the interactive nature of the Chord Sequencer, which could be switched in and out seamlessly and re-recorded at will.

There are plenty of WORKAROUNDS, but none of them match the CS for improvising, probably the reason most of us chose arrangers over WSs in the first place.