Adverse, I agree with you 100%. A million dollar track is worthless if its mastered poorly. A great amount of the time I spend more time on mastering than the track itself. Usually when I get feedback from people, even if they don't like my music at all they at least say the mastering is real good and clean (feel free to challenge that, I'm always open to constructive critcism). At the end of the day, I still scratch my head, trying to figure out how to boost certain frequency ranges to make my sound more full and get the thickest, loudest cut possible.

Here's how I generally mix stuff down (in order):

Waves Maxxbass: I use the agressive preset and tweak it so its not overpowering, but so that it still has balls.

Paragraphic EQ: I usually end up boosting a bunch of mid range and hi-range frequencies.

Waves LinEQ thingy: I find that this plug-in does a good job and cleaning up the low end so its not so muddy.

Waves Stereoimager: I add a slight stereo spread to make the track less cluttered, and give it a thicker feel to it.

Waves Ultramaximizer L2: -10dB threshold, -2.5dB ceiling, 100ms release

Waves L1: -4.0dB threshold, -2.7dB ceiling, 10ms release

That's my chain. I'm trying to find ways to improve even more. Sometimes I think I am limiting a bit too much. For instance, when i put a kick drum on the direct off beat, it will great quiet the track due to the amount of bass. I'm learning this all on my own as I go and am seriously considering taking some small courses on mastering.