In JBoss EAP 5 the facelets hot-xhtml-deploy has been fixed (if you modify a facelets xhtml file it reloads automatically), and it works if the exploded war/ear is inside the deploy directory.
Unfortunately it doesn't work if the exploded war/ear is deployed externally from the deploy directory, using JMX (like JetBrains IntelliJ Idea IDE does).
It worked in JBoss EAP 4.3.