[b]TL;DR at the bottom[/b] There seems to be a lot of confusion about what happened to Skolas with the update from Bungie this week. I'm here to end the confusion. Many of you think that he was nerfed. It's quite the opposite. Let's look at the facts [b]1) Bungie is eliminating burns from future modifier possibilities on the Skolas encounter [/b] [b]2) Bungie is nerfing Skolas' health to compensate for the lack of burn[/b] [b]3) Bungie is making the ads spawn at predictable intervals according to his health, as opposed to every 90 seconds[/b] [b]4) Burns buff the affected element by 300%[/b] Everyone always talks about how easy nightfalls are with burns on. This is because burns make it very easy to clear out ads, and allow you to kill the boss three times quicker than usual. It becomes about DPS instead of about surviving. Take away the burns, add lightswitch or grounded or angry and things become much more difficult. PoE is no different. With burns on, people were able to just walk in, kill the servitor, and burn him to the ground without working through a single mechanic. This is the way most fireteams completed the encounter, and this is [b]far easier[/b] than playing out the mechanics bit by bit. With burns off, this will be impossible now. Fireteams will be forced to play out the mechanics as it was designed. I'd be willing to bet that a lot less players will actually be able to complete it this way. Now you may be thinking, "but they're nerfing his health, so it'll be just as easy to burn him to the ground!" Remember, burns buff the element by 300%. This means that they would have to take his health down to 1/3 of what it was (66% less) in order to completely compensate for lack of burn. [b]They will not nerf him that much![/b] That's insane. I'm guessing they'll nerf him about 30% like they did for Valus. He will still take a ton of firepower to bring down. Even if you stand there with all black hammers or gallys, it will take far too long to burn him. You will be forced to play out the fight. This is a true test of skill, adaptation, and survival. Not, "who can stun lock him the longest." As far as making the ads predictably spawn, I have mixed feeling about this. On one hand, I loved having the ads being a [i]constant maintenance[/i], but you still couldn't ever get rid of all them. They were just something you had to deal with, and I think having them spawn predictably will make it significantly easier for those playing out the fight (which I don't like). On the other hand, they spawn at predictable [b]health intervals[/b]. Meaning, if you do attempt to burn him to the ground, you'll inadvertently spawn an obscene amount of ads, making the fight much much harder for you. Make no mistake, this will be harder for most people, because most people didn't actually play out the fight, and now they'll have to. The new modifiers like lightswitch and angry and grounded will be much more difficult to deal with than a burn. Overall, they really just balanced the fight by taking away the unreasonableness that arc burn provided, while simultaneously forcing players to play the way it was designed. [b]TL;DR[/b] 1) The lack of burns make it impossible to burn him to the ground. You'll have to play the mechanics 2) They will [b]not[/b] nerf him by 66%. That's insane. You won't be able to burn him to the ground with gally. I'm guessing a 30% nerf. 3) New modifiers like lightswitch, grounded, or angry will add a new a much more difficult challenge than a burn did. [b]EDIT: I'm just going to take out my opinion about how long the fight should take. The discussion is becoming too much about that, and not so much about the actual content. [/b] [spoiler]For those of you that don't believe that bungie will be adding new sets of modifiers, this is a quote from the update by Deej: [quote]CB: We want the Skolas encounter to be challenging and require teamwork, only in a more predictable way that doesn’t feel cheap. To accomplish this, we’re making the following changes to Round 6 of the Skolas Challenge: [b]New Modifier combinations [/b](Arc, Void, and Solar Burn will be removed) Boss health is reduced (to compensate for the lack of burn) Minions will spawn at predictable health intervals Minor adjustment to the unit makeup of the combatant waves In summary: Skolas is about to get a shorter life sentence. To ensure that he’ll still have a fighting chance, [b]there will be some more skulls for you to juggle[/b]. Your battle with the final boss changes next week. Get in there are tell us what you think.[/quote][/spoiler]