Nightbane

[Tuftears]

While the mobs DO hit hard, I've never had any mob (or even bosses in their enraged state) hit me for more than about 4,000 or so in a single hit

The trouble is that, for instance at the outset of Heroic Underbog, you have two hard-hitters like this both hitting for that much, and a healer mob to keep them alive. This zone is not doable without some kind of CC that works on the elementals.

As far as heroic Ramparts goes, you have to identify which of the mobs are the hard hitter and step up your healing when they're on, i.e. the Raveners have some kind of switch under which they will do greatly increased damage.

For the priests, Inner Fire adds 1580 more (untalented).

Oh hey. So call it 6k armor on the thoroughly potioned priest: that'd be 48.59% damage reduction!

I think it's weird and Smoking Blast is bugged if it does armor-mitigated physical damage, but I'm greatly curious to hear if this might actually be a viable strategy. (We've previously seen a wand that does physical damage)

Kind of argues that Blizzard isn't testing their games properly though, if they missed the damage type - their testers can't have missed the amount of damage that Smoking Blast does.