Don't give up hope ranger, nothing ever falls when you want it to. I spent 5 hours on one of my rangers and then went in there with my cleric to do some lvl'ing and it dropped 5 times. luckily though I logged my ranger there so was able to switch over and get it. Be patient, all spell drops and camps suck. It'll pass in time, great spell and worth it even at lvl 79 :)
Yep, they are very gate-happy. I had one gate 3 times, each time healing back to 33%. None have come back with friends so far, but I will be making sure we have some stuns loaded up next time.
Level range is more like 51-53 I think. I have only killed a handful, but they have all been white or yellow to a 51.
My group of low 50s friends and I have been camping the Nautilus room for the last couple of days, and I have found these guys to be fairly nasty; no MOB (even the named for that area Dulein Gedasai) seems nearly as tough. These guys commonly get Malosi and a DoT to stick to me, and act exactly as I would if I were a Shaman being attacked in my home. These guys are doable, but make sure you have as many resistance buffs on as possible.
My ranger tried his new level 55 spell, Call of Fire, for the first time while fighting these and it work tremendously well in interrupting their casting. I averaged 8 or 9 interrupts per fight.
They also drop the blackened vial.... and I'd lower the level by one or two, as they were db to me (54 Shaman), and yellow to red to 51 Warrior. We got a number of the amulets, took maybe 12or 15 kills to get one vial. We set up shop in the 'Tee' intersection between the Blackhand room and the Nautilus room - only an occasional wandering blackhand there, who spawns right near the intersection on about an 18 minute timer. We had myself, the 51 War, who dinged to 52, a 53 Enchanter (puller), and a 57 Druid. These went down fairly easy, both myself and the Warrior stayed in barb form so we could bash, and the chanter kept up stun spells to interrupt them casting gate. Used Pacify, which was resisted a few times... had one rough looking pull where we got 3, but we put them all down. Named mob spawned after maybe 10 or so pulls, which caused the only death - the chanter. Mob popped right on top of her as she was pacifying the room to get another adherent. Once the Vial dropped, we turned our attention to the blackhand room, which was much easier. Adherents took 2 E-Bolts, Blackhands one, along with melee and nukage from druid and chanter. The Adherents hit like a ton of bricks, and slowing them is definitely a good thing. Resists seemed about average, had a couple resists on poison, Malosi generally took care of that. Exception was named - He had very good resists. All in all, it was a fun night, got a couple of decent loots, some xp, and am now 3/4 of the way to having my Blood of Nadox spell... Just the Luggalds to go.