The essence tainting and mines are additions to the Skolas fight that just feel out of the blue. Skolas does nothing to taint you when you face him in the story mission and I don't recall hearing or seeing any mention of this mysterious power so it was simply put in to raise tension without any context. The mines are also just thrown in without any rime or reason to make the fight more difficult but again without context. In the story mission Skolas clearly has some sort of servitor fetish so the servitor bind doesn't seem to far out there and I can accept it pretty easily. But the other 2 don't ramp the tension because you can predict them, plan for them, and even wait until you're ready to handle them before triggering them so it is "artificial" in the sense that the tension doesn't gradually build or hit high points on its own since you can entirely plan for each piece. If the waves steadily got larger as Skolas called on more and more reinforcements that would feel more natural as it is grounded in Skolas's need to survive. If you could not permanently sever his bond and the bond stayed broken for a progressively shorter period of time so all your shots need to count that would be a natural ramping of tension. If he enraged and completely switched modes of attack and became more aggressive that would be a natural spike in tension because again it would be grounded in his desperate need to survive. That's what I mean when I say it is artificial, it is a seemingly random addition or added solely to make the situation more challenging without being grounded in any reason or lore. The ciphers are RNG, should have thought of that before I brought it up so it isn't really worth the debate. I agree it is up to the individual to determine the worth of the experience, I can't recommend Skolas for any good reason. Once for completion sake and then done.