"If the review on FF.net was good and the other one was horrible, I'd assume it had plenty of smut."

I presume you meant AFF instead of FF?

"I just dive into a fic headfirst - reading other people's (often uninformed and ill-thought-out) opinions just interferes with my ability to judge a fic on its own merit (or lack thereof.)"

I flick between reading the fic first and reading the reviews first. Sometimes, reading the reviews inspires me to read the fic, if only to understand what the hell the reviewers are babbling about.

"If the reviews are good at AFF, it's likely to be more smut, less plot."

Except with said Tomb Raider fic, where it had a lot of good reviews, but neither smut nor much plot (obviously, given that Lara died at the end of each chapter).

"If there's more 'omg, best story evar' and 'Dracos sooooo~oo hot!' than 'Well, this is good, but you should really work on these three points...' then I find that it's usually a pointless story."

Hmm... I'm not so sure that's a good rule of thumb. There are so many idiots on FF that I've had my fair share of those reviews, yet my beta readers come from here, so they can't be that pointless.

"If both types seem to be outweighed by the flames and otherwise negative responses, then it's dually not worth reading."

Or the author pissed off the author of a Suefic and the Suethor whined about it and got a load of counter-flames by her army of rabid readers. A friend had to delete her story once because she got hit by a load of those.

"I've seen utter dreck given rave reviews, simply for being 'hot'"

Or, worse, descriptions of how hard it made the reviewer climax. *shudders*

The answer I'm leaning towards is 'Screw the reviews, let's read this fic with rockets launchers standing by.'

And the general level of fic... hmm... search up Deathstalker (mainly for the Resident Evil section, but expands once in a while) or SuicideKing (for Harry Potter). Those will assure you that you never wish to return to the site again. But yes, you can get the very, very, very occasional goodfic on the site (or, at the very least, averagefic). I've encountered two that I can think of: one which has no smut whatsoever and just focuses on killing Lara Croft in a thousand different ways. It was well-written and the idea was so obvious yet rare that it was immediately spared my wrath. The second was a... actually, I can't remember what the second one was. A contender for the spot, however, would be a Star Wars fic with would be a very good (and incredibly phregging disturbing) torture fic if it hadn't had the sexual elements in (though, it's been a while since I've read it and they could potentially enhance the story further depending on your mindset).

AFF has very few non-smut fics and, hilariously, the reviewers complain when something isn't smut. DCase in point: that Tomb Raider fic mentioned above, one reviewer shouted 'ZOMFG how can you find this erotic, you sick bastard' or something to that extent, completely missing the point that it was simply too bloody for FF.net, rather than being too erotic.