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I'm going to offer the best piece of advice in this entire thread.
Give up on it.
This is officially the end. No one can get good ski advice on NS anymore. Time was when there was only a small minority of idiots, easily ignored, telling you things that would completely fuck you over. Now it seems like the good advice is lost in the din of dumb kids (haha, DIN, pun, funny). I can't believe I actually just read "He's 185 pounds, he would snap the ARVs in two". Three years ago the 95 waist SP was deemed "too fat to be useful" by a lot of people, and now a 96 ski is apparently to be considered flimsy. Then we have this bunyon guy trying to discredit two of the most reliable sources of gear info (who actually post, that is) in Iggy and Luke. Yeah, Luke is a big K2 fanboy. It's so true. He's admitted it on numerous occasions. But that doesn't make him any less right in reccomending certain skis. In some cases, especially this one, there is a K2 ski that might just be the best one for the job. You're going to tell me that's bad advice because of their quiver? How does that even make sense? The fact is, these guys do know their shit, and the reason they all own SVs is not because they're biased towards K2, it's because it's a fucking good ski. Whether you have a quiver or not, a pair of Seths is a good core stick to have. Fat, but not stupidly so, beef, but not ridiculously stiff, and of a good length at 189 if you're a reasonably large guy. I have a modest quiver (4 pair), and my pistols are pretty much the backbone of it. If you're going to try to tell someone their advice is bad, do it on the basis of what ski they're reccomending, not what skis they own. That's patently idiotic.
As for skimasterflex, you have got the k2 mounting points right, +8 is generally one of the spots, but having ridden SPs personally and in others' case SV as a main ski, we (and I'm speaking for the aforementioned "V-crew" as well) can say pretty confidently that they really ski best when you don't have to lean back. I might be a bit biased on this, given that I tend to like my all mountain skis further back than most people (hell, mine are currently +1, not that I take them in the park), but to me core center really is a park oriented mount that has no business on a pair of 189s being skiied in whistler. +5 is tried, tested, and true, and works well everywhere. And yes... he probably will spend more time out of the park than in... why wouldn't he. Did you notice what mountain he skis at? When he feels like taking a few laps through the park, +5 will not hinder that. I ride Armada, I'm aware of where the mount line is. You'll notice that any sane person will mount their JPs at least 2-3cm behind it, if not more. Some people at AR mount as far as 9 back of center. But I'm not sure bringing up the analogy of "progressive companies" is even relevant, simply by virtue of the fact that they ARE different companies and have different mount spots for a reason: they make very different skis.
I'm going to stick with what I originally said. One ski for park and powder. If you're going more pow than park, Vicious at +5. If more park than pow, ArV at 0. Given that you seem to be worried about flex it's safe to assume that it's the former, which makes sense at Whis, really. But if you're going that route, don't try to use the mount point as a compromise. You'll end up losing all mountain performance for the sake of something which, if it was as big a concern as all mountain performance, would have dictated your ski choice in the first place.
