Quote - I use a scale of 1.6 or 1.7. There are parts of the EZskin shader I just don't get. Like why is there a subtract node on the texture strength of the scatter?

The subtract node is part of a calculation to vary the amount of texture detail depending on whether or not the texture represents skin or some other material, such as hair (e.g. eyebrows). Skin is assigned a lower level of texture detail, while hair is assigned a higher level. The Component node tries to identify which bits of the texture represent skin by measuring the red component of the RGB value. This is an approximation which generally works well but may not be optimal for some skin/hair colour combinations.

Quote - I also don't know how to put a specular map into this set up rather than using procedural specular.

You should be able to simply plug a specular map into the Specular channel and let EZSkin find it and incorporate it into its own shader.

Free stuff @ https://poser.cobrablade.net/