on my Orc marksman hunter:
As Geek Mecha noted, I came into the zone geared kinda mediocre. Lots of welfare epics, like from Battlefield Barrens. Looting a lot of different types of chests in the zone pushed my ilvl up about 3 points… even with my trashy blue weapon continuing to depress the average. The fact that some of the Timeless welfare epics come with sockets is an even bigger plus than just the ilvl might indicate, since overally Timeless pieces are same ilvl as “Insurgent’s” (etc.)
And forwarding the unbound extras to alts was a real bonus.
Got my “free” Burden of Eternity from the Blazing Chest next to the Ordon Sanctuary. Being an engineer made it easy to get past the broken bridge (goblin glider), and being a hunter with camoflage made it easy to get past all the mobs to loot the chest. YMMV.
I used that Burden to upgrade the Timeless mail pants I looted at the same time. I tried using it on the Timeless mail chest I was already wearing (after having “activated” it), but that didn’t work. So I tried it on the unactivated pants, and it did work. But I didn’t notice that I’d looted an unactivated mail chest, which is really what I would have wanted upgraded to ilvl 535. :smack: Oh, well. Maybe next Burden I find.
Overpulls will kill very fast, similarly to earlier events. But there are new nuances, like how the little turtles will social aggro if you attack any turtle within aggro range… I had my pet die a few times because an elite big turtle’s spin-punt move put the fight into the midst of half a dozen little turtles, and they all added, and the additional inbound DPS outpaced my Mend Pet. 
Also, some critters fight unreasonably harder than others. I have to go pretty close to all-out to defeat one of the elite snakes before it kills my pet; otherwise, it consistently outdamages my healing and I have to solo down the snake’s last 5-10% of health.
Getting chain stunned by multiple elite tigers pouncing is pretty close to the dictionary defintion of “suck”. 
Had pretty good luck with non-group group attacks on rares and rare elites. The big whale shark that circles the island can be a bitch, though; if you try to stay in engagement with him, you’ll wind up pathing through “fatigue” water long enough to kill you. However, he doesn’t look like he resets if you back off, so I’ll have to remember to do that next time.
On a PvP server, the island is a pretty fun grind until one of the roving ultraviolence gangs of opposite-faction PvPers tears through the area you’re grinding. The fact that the zone has an actual PvP currency and interesting PvP rewards obviously encourages that behavior. Oh, well.
