Are you talking singles or twins, aerea's suitable for emergency landings/ autorotations or hostile area, etc?
I was raised on Cat A profiles, which seem to dictate the minimum power necessary to get the job done, so I may be biased.
Besides, with Cat A you are not supposed to enter the H/V curve at all.
One of the risks of max power to me is indeed that if you lose the donk, you lose NR very quickly, it has a large effect in yaw which makes recovery more difficult and you need to react very quickly and correctly to get it right.
I prefer the better control of the machine in case of an engine failure over the fraction of time less spent in the curve over the total of the flight.
Interesting dilemma though; looking forward to more replies.