i think it's a good idea to look at distortion as an effect.. imagine if you didn't have the limiter. too much of that distortion would just sound crap. so you get a really nice sounding distortion and then use the limiter to bring that lovely distortion out into the mix (and if you set the limiter right, it wont go into the red).. But if you drive that limiter too much, you will only bring out the real shittiness in the distortion. a nice balance of great distortion (ie knock off your limiter for a sec and listen) and good limiting (ie not tooo much) and then the eq at some point before the limiter to make real nice small adjustments when ya got the whole chain on ;)