I was beginning to lose patience with it when the 3 guards appeared. It's the one Strike in the game that I absolutely loath. I do feel as if it's more about quantity of foes to fight ( and how much health they have, how much damage they can take and how much they can deal ) than quality and variety of content and strategy.

Did the Nightfall and The 28 Heroic and had no problems with either. The enemies were fine, in my opinion. It's all a matter of team coordination and communication. We rolled with a Striker, Sunsinger, and Bladedancer the first time through. Striker and Sunsinger were both on adds detail while my Bladedancer was focused on Valus. The Striker we had was dealing with the adds that spawned nearby me, while i sniped. My wife, who was the Sunsinger, dealt with the adds across the way. I had Ice Breaker, so i could pump shots onto him endlessly, keep myself in cover very well, and kept his attention solely on me. You just need one person on each group of adds, and at least one person on the boss at all times. If need be, switch jobs with someone on the fly. Be flexible and be ready to change up the plan a bit of things go south.

The Mars strike is no harder than defeating Phogoth or the Nexus. Valus needs a patch to himself because after he gets to half health he spams his missiles every .75-2 seconds. Makes it hard to focus him.

Good for you for soloing it! I found it very difficult with 3 other people! But yes I do completely agree, it's very hard. I am dreading it because I don't want it to be another weekly strike.

No offense, but you might just suck? Okay yes, that certainly seems very offensive, and it probably is more than a bit. But in all reality, so many players are saying it's not that bad. I've solo'd it, duo'd it, carried two noobs who enter it on "Very Hard", on 28 AND on the nightfall (nightfall was easier, yay arc burn). Overall, the concensus is that it's NOT hard. So then why would you say the strike needs nerfed very badly? Well... I think the problem is not the challenge, but the player(s). If they were seasoned level 26's and 27's in legendary and exotic gear, they should ABSOLUTELY be able to take him on Level 22. The Valus Ta'aurc strike is seen by many to be one of the easiest just because the boss tactics are so simple. Three of the minibosses are phalanxes, and they provide you with respawning interceptors to blast around their shield if you can't shoot them. The tank is super-easy if you're actually trying to damage it. The most dangerous thing about him is the fiery cannon shot, but you can easily dodge it by flying or strafing. Combine that with the interceptor to deal massive damage even when solo, and the tank is probably the easiest vehicle to fight. Then Valus Ta'aurc himself can easily be tricked to get headshots where he tries to shoot at your covered body and can't touch you. Enemy resistance moves about the map as the fight goes on, and you can choose where to stand all around him to find places the enemies aren't, making even a solo fight relatively simple when you stop to look where the safest spots are. Yes, people can cheese this boss, but you don't even need to. If you have allies, one can cover your back while you shoot his head with minimal resistance on his part. Rockets may be bad, but you can dodge those too by flying and tricking them to fly over you as you land. My guess is that since you've never used a hand cannon, and almost never used a scout rifle, the problem is that you aren't fully aware of what you can do with other guns and how they can be useful in different situations, as well as being underexperienced and complaining something is too hard instead of trying different weapons. Maybe your team lacks the coordination to know not everybody needs to be firing on the boss, or to realize you're being swarmed and should move to one of the other hundred places you could take cover. Maybe you don't know how to quickly dispatch of foes by utilizing all of the weapons in your arsenal including grenades and supers, or know how to take weapon stats into consideration when picking which fusion rifle you should be using or whether this auto rifle with low impact but high rate of fire is better or worse than the one with moderate impact and rate of fire? Maybe you don't know how to predict attacks and/or dodge them effectively? Maybe, just maybe, the problem is that you aren't that good at the game?