Re: IDEs for serious Java/JavaFX development

NB: No flame wars here please...

I am about to commence a "serious" and large-scale commercial project
using Java and JavaFX (ultimately targeted at JDK 8) and want to get my
house in order by carefully selecting the best tools.

I have been a very happy long-term Eclipse user but have also done quite
a bit of work with NetBeans. In fact I started-out with NetBeans but
after trying Eclipse for the first time I never went back. The reason
was that Eclipse just seems to be way more stable, feels much snappier
and more responsive, has a lot more features and because there are far
more 3rd-party plugins available.

NetBeans on the other hand just seems to crash too often and I cannot
remember the number of times I had to rebuild a project from scratch
because NB screwed up the project configuration. On the plus side
though, Oracle are really behind NetBeans and instead of throwing it out
with the bath water when they acquired Sun (as many expected them to
do), they have in fact invested heavily into its future and market it as
the premier IDE for Java projects.

Given that the UI of this project will be developed principally in
JavaFX it is worth noting that NetBeans 7.4 seems to have the best
support for JavaFX (certainly in terms of built-in support) although I
have been happy with the e(fx)clipse plugin available for Eclipse (happy
except of course for the product's bizarre name).

But having said all of that, I believe many developers are most happy
with IntelliJ and am hoping I can get some feedback as to why this is
so. Given that this is the only IDE out of the 3 I have mentioned that
actually costs money, could someone explain why it is worth the
financial outlay? Is it just that good? What features make it "best of
breed"?

I would also appreciate any other comments detailing people's experience
with and impressions of various IDEs for Java (and JavaFX) development.