TL:DR [spoiler]I enjoy challenging content and getting the mechanics of Skolas down is quite a challenge. People hate on it as a chore that lacks replayability, but that could be said about any game. It's a better boss fight than Crota. There are some great people playing this game, strangers who I had never played with before helped me learn the mechanics of this difficult challenge, and it's stupid to think I wouldn't have found similar people through in-game LFG. Checkpoints would be nice, though.[/spoiler] My regular Destiny buddies haven't been up to tackle Skolas, so I'm currently short that Moment of Triumph (and only that one). Last night a kind member of our community offered to teach me the ways of 35 PoE. He and another Skolas-killer took me into the prison to face off with the Kell of Kells. As a new team, we had a few silly wipes on the first 5 rounds but nothing major. When we got to Skolas, my new teammates showed me the mechanics and locations that had worked for them for a couple of matches against him. After two wipes by Skolas as they taught me the fight, my mentor received a call from work telling him that he'd have to be in very early the next (this) morning. To get any worthwhile sleep at all, he had one more go at Skolas left in him before he'd have to go to sleep. With at least general knowledge of what we had to do, we went in for my first "real" attempt. Several rotations and transparent-Servitor-hunts later, we had Skolas well below half health when a Sword Captain snuck up and lightswitched the next man up in our Essence rotation. Swordy camped on the orb, so we couldn't get the resurrection in time, and so the Essence killed me leaving one man standing, and he went down while valiantly trying to revive our teammate. Posting that you're at Skolas and need one more gets a response very quickly, so we soon had a new 3rd, another experienced Skolas slayer. It took two more fights for us to fully integrate as a team, and then we consistently got to the mine dismantling portion of the fight before one of us would be lightswitched and another Essence wipe ensued. After three wipes at the mines, the other remaining member of the initial 3 person team left for some shuteye, and the player I had just met who joined for the Skolas checkpoint agreed to let me bring in one of those buddies I mentioned at the top - who had never tried Skolas. He walked my friend through it much as the two others had walked me, and our first attempt together got well past half-health Skolas. On our second and third, we wiped on the first spawn of the mines. On our fourth attempt, we dismantled the mines and then one of the others had a lapse in concentration and went down to a Dreg melee on a rotation (it's happened to all of us with lightswitch, some time or another). Fifth attempt, first round of mines down, we were on back-left platform when Skolas teleported all the way up the wing-ramp and stomped two of us dead. The clock caught up to us and things started to deteriorate. We had a few short attempts where sloppy mistakes caused wipes shortly after the bonds were broken, and realized we were all just too tired to go on. "One last run" resulted in a pretty good run, dismantling the first two mines before the Essence-free, non-immune guy went down to some lightswitch or another, and we couldn't get the revive in time to re-establish the Essence-cycle and dismantle mine 3. Our one and only mine-wipe of the night. MY POINT: This is what end-game content should be. Challenging. You've got to learn it. You can't just run in and "melt it with Gally." If I can destroy the final boss in the game/DLC on my first attempt, the game is too easy and I don't want to play easy-mode. This is what VoG was with Vanilla. It is what Crota should have been with TDB (but he was, and arguably still is, way too buggy). Any content gets repetitive, but I think this was a well done end-game fight. I don't play with a loot-cave mentality. I don't play to get loot - I play to have fun and getting loot can be part of that, but my goal isn't "most loot per effort." If all I get from beating Skolas is yet another No Shard Beyond, I will still be happy because my Moments of Triumph are not loot drops! (I'd take something better, though, please stop giving me NLB). Downing Atheon for the first time, then again on Hard, are the moments I remember. I don't have any idea what I got from those. Soloing that first Nightfall, succeeding as relic holder or swordbearer... Those I remember. Loot, I just have. Isn't that what we play for? The rush of winning, and knowing it took some skill and practice? MY MODERATE COMPLAINT: I really would like a checkpoint at Skolas so I don't have to grind my way back through 5 rounds to give this another go. Learning the fight and 3 different teams took up a good bit of last night's 5 hours, but I rarely have that much time for gaming in one straight chunk. Grinding through 5 rounds first, every time, is going to be a huge time waste until I get this Skolas fight down. MY MAJOR COMPLAINT: When somebody has to leave a game, It's really stupid that we have to pull out a computer, tablet, or phone and go to something outside of the game to fill our team again. If we're willing to take on one more and teach them what we're doing, we should be able to opt-in, IN GAME, to have a random person matchmade with us in seconds instead of taking 5-10 minutes to write a post, wait for it to go live on the site, and then go through the type-GT-message-invite-wipe process.