What’s Wrong with Destiny’s Skolas

I played everything in Destiny with the exception of Trials of Osiris and Prison of Elders Skolas. For now I have no intention of doing ToO but Skolas is aggravating me and makes me want to stop playing Destiny altogether. By any means I am not Datto, Professor Broman or King Gathalion but an average player trying to have fun while playing.

Before I go on I want to emphasis that Bungie said multiple times that they are listening to complaints and so reduced the severity of Cerberus Vae III strike. They did something similar to Skolas but it did not accomplish the goal of make it manageable or fun to play. Keep in mind that I did Cerberus on a Nightfall before the nerf without any burns and could finish it.

Now what is wrong with Skolas or even with PoE?

1. No Checkpoints
2. Essence to aggressive
3. Bad ModifiersFirst of all it does not have checkpoints meaning that when a player leaves he/she has to start from scratch. Bungie even when so far to make it impossible to join when you reached the final round. Well, sort of, because you can still join if the team wipes there is a short window where a player can join again. That is nice but shows how broken PoE is – either it is possible or not and not impossible with a back door.

From my point of view Bungie wanted to prevent the distribution of checkpoints as it was done with Vault of Glass and Crota’s End but they just threw out the baby with the bath water. Bungie could instead either required the full team to resume or at least 2 of the 3 which the restriction that the new player does not get a checkpoint. Seriously Bungie, that can’t be that hard to implement.

The reason why this is a big issue is average players will need quite some time to just get to Skolas and when they arrive they are already exhausted and probably frustrated as well. Then Skolas can take 20 to 30 minutes to finish which isn’t too bad except when you wipe and you will then repeat it. So that endeavor can take hours which will exhaust and aggravate all players and there is no chance to take an extended break. Finally if the team has to abandon Skolas the frustration and anger level is high.

I also think that the essence is not well designed as the time you can carry it until you die is either too short or the immunity after it was taken off from you is too long. When one player is immune and the player that can take it dies then the only course of action is for the player with the essence to die with it. Leaving one player alive which will receive the essence soon afterwards. I don’t mind the essence but it should be toned down by reducing the time of the immunity and by removing the essence after 3 players had it for a while (2 to 3 minutes) for the team to recover, regroup and to put some damage onto Skolas.

Finally I do not appreciate the fact that Bungie did change their schedule last Monday by deploying and activating their changes before the weekly reset and then come up with lightswitch modifier which was changed to brawler on Tuesday. This screwed us over and made it impossible for us to finish after 7 to 8 hours of fighting.

Conclusion

In my view Bungie failed to make Skolas manageable for the average player. Many I know don’t bother to try and some that did, including me, failed and left frustrated. If Skolas is only for top-tier players then it is worse than VoG way back in the days. It is hard to get excited about The Taken King when the game is giving so much grief and I will not pre-order TTK until Bungie does something to elevate these issues in Skolas. Before 1.2.0.3 I could have managed to bring down Skolas but now it is impossible. Great Job.

• Andy