Watching one of Rob Trek's tutorial videos I found one that is very relevant to this discussion and more specifically on the comments above concerning manual mode.
As a side note, I have watched a few of his videos in the past and really liked them and then kind of forgot about them. I have decided I really need to watch a LOT more of them because he really offers some fantastic tips and techniques and his presentation is really down to earth. Anyway, back to the post...
Olympus Tutorial: Better Exposures with Spot Metering & Flash ep.232 is the one I was watching and in it he gives an excellent demonstration of where the exposure metering can be very useful even when shooting in full manual mode while using a TTL flash. If you want to save a little time, you can skip to 6:20 where he talks about linking the exposure spot to the focus spot on newer models (which prompted this thread).
Executive summary of the previous 6:20: He demonstrated kind of obvious stuff like taking a photo of the dim room with bright window with no flash, with TTL fill flash, trying the built in HDR mode, etc. to show how some of these kind of get you there but none truly overcome the high dynamic range of the scene he is shooting. Then he turns on a few setting like changing exposure to SPOT, turning on the blinkies and adjusting the histogram alerts where the blinkies occur from 255 & 0 to their tighter limits 245 & 10. For anyone who has not seen his videos, he tends to start with the camera setting reset to defaults to show which setting should be changed, so often a few of the settings he shows you will already be there.
The rest of the technique is a brilliant way to really get more control out of the TTL ability of your camera and flash to get what you want rather than what Olympus thinks you should get.