Personally, I use Ableton Live 7 (hopefully soon for my DAW. For synths and a lot of FX (the granular shit especially) I use Reaktor 5. Samples are either live recordings from my guitars or different other stuff or the EWQL line (Colossus, Symphony Orchestra, StormDrum). Then I use Guitar Rig for a bunch of distortion FX and Waves Gold for everything else. I use quite a few of the Live 7 onboard FX for simple delay, reverb, panning, EQ stuff as well.

I use a couple of other free VSTs for little bits and bobs, but mostly its this stuff. I use all of them pretty equally, but Reaktor and the Waves stuff get a TON of use from me.

Ah, fun stuff: my primary weapon of choice is OpenModPlug Tracker.
Renoise is nice but I like being able to use both hands (heh...)
Reason is kind of nice but it's missing that technical aspect that I enjoy.
Fruity Loops is just too distracting and clunky to me. :\

But I love VST's...I have an interesting collection. Hopefully you don't mind a lengthy post about them. ;D

First is my absolute favourite: Meteorite. It's easy to use but has a wide range of sounds.
I love the bass you can get from it, ie: http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=903521&songID=7...

Harder to use but still fun is OXEVST. It's a fancy pantsy FM synth. Extremely wide range of sounds but kind of technical and then some...

Easier to use again, String Theory. It's a synth that generates string sounds. Fun to use because of the pitch bending stuff you can use.

Another synth that I don't use as often is Analog Warfare. It had a bazillion cool features and things, but it seemed a little clunky...I'd still recommend it though.

As far as effects...
Berrtill is a super cool (although odd) distortion unit...I think it emulates circuit bending somewhat. (can't remember)

Ferox is a magnetic tape delay/distortion thing...Which is very good for your drums.

Other than that I just use standard issue delay, reverb, phasers, and what have you...

...but I must mention Glitch. If you haven't tried it yet, find it and try it.
(I would provide links, but kvr audio seems to be down...sorry)

I've tried the demo of Reason before, and the interface was a slight turn off. I've just finished looking at Renoise in Youtube, and by the looks of it, i'd pick Reason's interface over it. Ableton's OIC and EIC packs is very attractive, but currently out of my budget; i would also require a new hard drive for it, lol. I've found most of the VSTs mentioned, but i'm having trouble finding OXEVST. Know where to get a copy of it?

That might be because it's actually called "OXE FM".

...or some other combination of "OXE", "FM", and "VST".

http://www.oxesoft.com

I use FL Studio, in tandem with the EWQL orchestral library, mostly Image-Line synths (Biohazard, Morphine, Poizone, Sytrus), and a little bit of Massive. Effects (compression, EQ, delay, reverb are almost exclusively FL as well as using a great distortion plugin called "Camel Crusher" quite a bit.

Drums are a variety of loops and one shot samples I've purchased and found over the years. Here's a video of my Star Wars remix being played in FL:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3LMJjhJukI

I have a lot of the same tools as Hy Bound. Live, Reason 4, Eastwest orchestral libraries, Reaktor (which I haven't used much yet though), bunch of free vsti's, Dimension Pro once in a while.

I use Reason 4, along with Audacity; and I recently bought the Korg DS-10 Synthesizer for the Nintendo DS (really good, definitely worth the thirty bucks). I also have a digital voice recorder for voice effects, and other sounds I can get in my household.

I'm also looking to get a midi keyboard to use along with Reason so I can create more intricate rhythms.

And I'm surprised that people don't like the interface for Reason. I feel like it's loads more fun to tinker around with virtual knobs and wires and such than use control c and control v all the time with Audacity. To each their own, I suppose.

I recently got a chance to try Reason 4, where I found the sequencing interface to be less usable... <_<

The racks and wiring that you can do, however, I love. (Heck I was so inspired by the whole thing that I programmed a simple calculator based off the concept.)
The only problem with the rack is that...it's a rack. Linear. You can only put units up or down pretty much.

My dream interface would have the rack units like in Reason (i.e. with the ability to flip and wire and what have you), but the ability to place them wherever you want within a field. And, of course, an OpenModPlug Tracker sequencer.

Buzz Tracker is kind of like this, but the modules/racks/whatevers aren't as graphical, and also the tracker is awkward to me (who has grown up in a modplug environment).

[/very long post about idealisms]

I used to use Reason, but since the last quarter of 2008 I use a Motif XS 8 with Cubase, plus a few vsts, the glitch vst is getting a whole lot of usage right now! For mastering I use T-racks 3 and Audacity. I've only had this setup for 6 months so I've got a long way to go before I learn how to squeeze the best out of it; my new album was made using this setup.