Unless some crazy peaks need to be "delt with" I never "clip" anything.
Small stages of gain make up from this gear to that gear to that plugin etc etc

Btw the good old l2 can STILL do an amazing job sometime. It has that way of "compressing" things and make the midrange a tad forward, it can be very effective on some mixes. I miss the Spl Ultramiximizer hardware aswell, a great tool