I've done it once both ways, and I can easily say that beating Crota normally is almost easier than cheesing him. And it's not hard to beat him at all, it just not fun when your team sucks. So that's why I resorted to cheesing him the second time and it was just as infuriating until we got it to work, but then people kept dying and we had to wipe because no one shot over soul. I just found a new group and beat him normally in one run lol