guitar effects

[Narmoth]

I keep hearing that multi effect pedals are crap and you're better off going with a bunch of specialized pedals. Is there any truth to that?

The problem is when you want to run it through an amp with distortion.
Wah pedals, volume, gain and (additional) distortion goes usually before pre-gain, that is, you plug into them, and then plug into the amp.
Reverb, echo, delay, phaser and such effects, on the other hand, are usually put in between pre- and post-gain (with tube amps, you have separate tubes for pre-gain, and other, bigger tubes for post-gain).

A multi effect board combines the two kind of effects, so you have to plug them in before pre-gain. You can't then use them effectively with the amp.
But they're really great with a simple transistor amp, where you get all gain from the multi effect board.

Then again, I know that Dark Tranquillity uses Behringer V-amp mulit effects and tube amps. But I think they only use the reverb and delay effects from the mulit effect, and use stomp boxes for wah and such.