Patch Points

You can think of a Patch Point as a virtual patch cable with with an unlimited number of connectors at each end, allowing you to merge as many signals as you want and distribute the sum to as many different destinations as you want.
 
You create the point, and you can send/output any tracks/buses you want to it, and assign it as input to any other tracks and buses you want so long as it doesn't result in a feedback loop (which is automatically prevented).

The most obvious one for me has been "real time" capture of things which do not have parameters recorded, per se. The biggest example of this is a synth with non-synchronized oscillators... if you hit the same key/chord over and over again, the sound alters with each firing, so even a freeze of such may be different than it was during last playback. Even in something "simple" like a screen capture of a "synth in action" required an external loopback for me in the past because not all things adjusted/tweaked get captured on the fly.
 
To your point of functionality, much of the rest is another method of what has existed prior.