Thanks, Kurt. The fight was pretty exciting and I'm glad it presented a challenge... even if it was a bit too much.
That type of encounter is my favorite to run, think about, and especially play against. I think that the writers may not have considered how much juice the encounter had... Of course, the fact that her her most difficult to work around power kept re-charging didn't help much. I also ran the encounter trying to make it very difficult.
The other group took a very different approach... First, they ended up "taking down" the orb with a series of DC20+ Arcana checks while getting bombed by the Eladrin inside. They took "full defense" actions when the melee characters couldn't do much else due to being slowed, which helped. They knew the fight was going to be really deadly so you didnt see them using any item/daily powers in the "first" encounter. They had several debuff type of effects that they used to great effect. Their cleric was able to heal a LOT, which obviously helped. I forgot to hurt people who started within 2 squares of her almost the entire fight. I was only able to use her power that pushed people back twice. I also had roughly two straight rounds where I rolled nothing but 4's and 5's. Overall, I think their group was much better suited to fight her (ranged attacks, debuffs, tons of healing, higher defenses, etc). It was difficult for them, but I only dropped a few PC's.
