...so have to guess it's because they may have taken that wand out of circulation.

I had that sleek black with Dronstyrr. It was absurdly brutal. Full ABS with 1250 hp and -85 svspell and I'd die 50% of the time. It wasn't necessarily the mob itself that made the wand location brutal it was these 3 factors:

1) Insanity at the very least. For like a day. Basically, you had to wear that mask or just not talk to people or anyone would know where your black was. That made it suck badly, just in and of itself.

2) Can only flee one way, and not the way you came (you need to crawl) (which leads to...)

3) A ton of insanely tough aggro mobs right next to the mob, who, by the way, is a level 51+ invoker mob with barrier protection (and has multiple pieces of unique, pimptastic gear...IE, a tough ####er)

Honestly, with my last shifter, I didn't even bother looking for my Black hardly. I just used limited barrier (and since I had komodo/tiger, honestly, I barely ever even needed barrier) and I think I did relatively well.