I use renoise, and might I add that you should check out this thread Elektron IRC!
Both #renoise and #elektron are on the same server. You can probably get much more detailed answers there.
To the main questions, sequencing with renoise as a matter of sending midi can be a bit of a pain. It is very easy to layout your project, but there’s a lot of editing procedures that can be tedious depending on how you are used to working.
It’s fairly rare for folks to sequence by sampling parts from hardware and chopping them up. That doesn’t mean you can’t do it, and in fact I would say it is the most flexible way to do things.
There are a lot of things ableton live is better at when it comes to sequencing hardware though. Simply editing or arranging in the session view and using the various sequencing features offered by clips gives a great deal of immediate sequencing ability. A lot of the benefits of using renoise come from the meta devices and having a trackers interface (which is irrelevant if you’re not used to it).
You’d really have to just try and it see if the workflow fits for you. I would definitely say though, that if you don’t already know how to work with a tracker, then it’s going to be a steep learning curve for relatively little benefit.