I am posting super late in this thread but here are my 2 cents:

I use solar arcs, secondary progressions and primary directions. In my experience solar arcs are very powerful, very accurate and very descriptive. In spite of my preference for traditional techniques, solar arcs are one modern technique which I highly advocate. As for secondary progressions; I have found them quite accurate as well; however in my experience it is important to use them within the proper guidelines (my own personal ones listed below) in order to get accurate results for them. As for primary directions, I am not sure about them but this is because I don't have enough experience with them yet; they seem to be hit and miss, but mostly hit. I think this is mostly due to the fact that I haven't had adequate experience with them yet though.

solar arcs:
-hard aspects only
-orb of .5 degree applying and separating
-I use traditional and modern planets
-I use universal and accidental rulerships

secondary progressions:
-I only use secondary progressed planets aspecting natal planets. I have found this is quite reliable and reduces the signal/noise ratio as opposed to using secondary progressed planets aspecting other secondary progressed planets; which gets really messy and overly subjective in my experience
-I use universal and accidental rulerships
-I use an orb of 1 degree approaching, .5 separating
-I use all the traditional aspects soft and hard
-As noted above, the secondary progressed moon is extremely useful in my experience and almost always correlates with significant time periods or events.