Hi Chris,
Always happy to see a long time lurker come out.
99% of the time I like my machine to stop in the needle down position so I have my machine set to always stop needle down and I rarely ever change that. But I have an up/down button on my handles so it only takes a quick press of the button to raise the needle. I am pretty sure most LA are equipped with that.
99% of the time I have my idle speed set to zero and I can count on one hand the number of times I have changed it. When I stop, my needle stops. I occasionally get a long stitch when starting out if I am too quick to "jump out of the gate" from a dead stop but they aren't toe catchers so I am ok with that. I rarely quilt without my stitch regulator on but that is probably because I learned to longarm with a stitch regulator. The more responsive stitch regulators, like the Innova lightening stitch, you should not need to have your idle speed set to anything but zero.
I was never any good at quilting on my domestic so I rarely did it. I pretty much went from hand quilting to longarming with very little sitdown machine quilting in between.