Crab-
Perhaps this sentence is the nub of the misunderstanding?-
"Early posters seemed hard over that the only way to get into a field site safely was to make a very slow and steep (bordering on vertical) approach because that was the only way to spot wires."
As explained to me:
The vertical doesn't help seeing wires, the vertical descent helps you survive wires by putting the helo in the least vulnerable position possible.
The slow descent helps you see the wires and react to situations. Impatience is dangerous because it's leads to impulsive and poorly considered decisions. I have no choice but to take a minute and a half on my last 300 feet per company policy that all descents below 300' AGL will be at or less than 200 FPM. It's hard to be really good in this profession, but slow makes fine adjustments easier, and our pilots look skillful- at least me.
A fundamental principle of avoiding wires is look for the towers and poles in rights of way because wires are hard to see from altitude. Lots of issues with this, for instance the line of poles along a road will be obvious, but where the conducting wire crosses will not, it can cross at any angle, and wires are hard to see. We land on a lot of roads, I've landed on many where the wire wasn't visible except against the sky, and a few where I never saw wire even though I was looking at the hardware on the pole at both ends of the span.