My buddies and I were running the nightfall as normal and while I was trying to show them where to hide if they took too much damage, Phogoth and every additional enemy completely despawned and we beat the nightfall and collected our loot without ever having to fight Phogoth. Pretty cool glitch. I haven't tested it again yet to see if it was a one time thing or not. We were chatting in party chat instead of fireteam chat, so unfortunately there are no voices but if this video gains popularity, I will do a voice over for it explaining exactly what happened.
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Surely if it works in the nightfall it'll work in the normal strike .. so it would be pretty easy, and far less risky, to test this theory and ascertain the truth prior to attempting it in the nightfall.