The following minor issues with the Simple Deform modifier have been addressed:

1. The stretch mode doesn't break with large stretch values (the equation I use actually ensures that for the ideal case of a cylinder or cuboid, volume is preserved)
2. The limits act in an intuitive manner (this was as simple as removing the factor value's dependency on the limits, it no longer gets scaled according to the limit range)
3. The size of an object along the limit axis no longer affects the resulting deformation along said axis (for example, previously a twist rotation of 45 degrees on a cube with radius 3 would result in a rotation of 135, or 45*3, degrees at either end)