Agreed wholeheartedly. I don't even bother doing Skolas anymore, since the last few times were a waste of multiple hours. And yes, I beat him the first week, and no, we didn't just "shoot gjallarhorn, pop heavies, shoot gjallarhorn again". Anyone on PS3 knows this strategy is impossible since loading time to pop a heavy takes up to 30 seconds. New gen, you have it much easier than you know ;) So anyways, yes, we beat it the ol' fashioned way, running around, killing shit, trying desperately to stay alive and revive the best we could. I got a cool ship and shader for my efforts. Sure, a good one time reward. But there's not much incentive for me to repeat these efforts week after week. My solutions: -A Skolas kill is a guaranteed elemental primary. The available guns aren't even that great, so at least give us one of the subpar elemental primaries, guaranteed. -OP's suggestion of making the fight a 34 encounter is good; however, impractical seeing as there is already a 34 encounter. -Take out mines OR essence. Just one or the other. Leave everything else. All of it together is just such a pain in the ass, and not fun to repeat, simply because your hunter ran out of invisibility, or you got overran in your titan bubble, or any of the other things that can happen while diffusing mines. And of course, if the wrong player dies, and your left with an immune guy and a guy about to die from essence, hello Wipe! Having it all together sucks. It would still be a difficult fight without either essence or mines. -CHECKPOINTS. I'd actually play Skolas way more often if I knew I didn't have to risk too much of my time to get to Skolas, fight him a few times and fail, and then have to eat dinner with my girlfriend, or whatever else in life may happen, only to be back at f-ing square one. Could be a fun challenge. Instead, it's a time sink that I don't bother with anymore. I'm not going to get any better guns than what I already have (that is, if I'm even LUCKY enough to get a gun), and who cares about armor and weapon cores once you've got a few? As for etheric light, seeing as I'm sitting on 15 of them, and can get them much easier through level 34 poe and trials, again, what is the point of fighting Skolas? Good post, OP.