Well I have to admit that the recent sky-rocketing of the value in these armors has eluded me somewhat; only a couple of years ago it seems I was struggling to sell a full set of T-Bird (M) for only +2500 and now, since RDI and new tezlapod spawn, you can't find it for less than 4-5 times that price. Same thing for Viking; I sold a full set in my shop a couple years ago not even +3500 and now it's way way more than that, though I don't really understand the reason for that one since there are no new cold mobs...
So I admit, I'm not really sure these days how much those armors go for, seems the price just keeps going up and up and up, so my estimates are most likely wrong.
Durability won't make any difference, especially since decay factors into the loot calculation, it becomes very difficult to predict the amount of "savings" actually realized due to Durability. I did make a brilliant attempt at it nonetheless in my
Armor Guide, if you want to see all the factors involved. But you are talking about a difference of less than 2% on decay, and since most of it is returned in loot, it's actually a tiny fraction of that, so it would take years before you realized a savings of 1k ped (I figure about 65 pec saving per day versus an armor with 2000 less Dura).
Sure, but the "usefulness' of that protection is what is being debated here. The most prevalent damage type in the game is Impact, after that, probably Cut and then probably Acid, and that's where most of the value of that set resides, in the Acid protection.
For example, I don't think anyone would buy HAZEN for it's Cold protection, I know I wouldn't. You can always buy cheap Polaris armor parts on the auction for 101% or less, I do it all the time. So who cares about Cold..
If you want Electric, you can still buy T-Bird limited for less than 110%, so that's not too bad. Of course, it's better to find an UL solution but if not, 10% or less mu price isn't that bad.
If you need Burn, you can still find Hermes (L) or Eon (L) for less than 120%, so it's manageable.
The really expensive protection is the Acid, because if you want decent Acid protection, you need to go to an uber armor like Rutuba, Infiltrator or Perseus, the mu on those is very high, so this is where you can realize the biggest savings in hunting by using HAZEN.
Now this brings another point I want to make: You will almost NEVER find mobs that have multiple of these Damage types at the same time. For example, there is HENDRIX Dragon on RT that has all 3 special damage types electric, cold and acid, and there is the Warhound on the Ark Moon that does 50/50 Acid and Electric. And yes, as someone pointed out, Incision plates would be perfect on this set for Easter Mayhem and the RDI Secret Lab. But aside from that, I would contend that the main reason to buy this set is for the Acid, and even then you will almost always find yourself having to add plates to it to make it work; this set almost never works without plates (as opposed to something like Supremacy for example, which is why it's worth so much). Of course there are several mobs that are 100% of a special damage type like Electric or Cold or Acid and it's great for that.
I think the 30k I said earlier is too low, I'll concede to that. I'm sure that anyone paying anything up to 50k for it can't go wrong; it's a really good armor which can be very versatile and allow someone to hunt a lot of high level mobs (with the right plates of course).
