Some bosses in Path of Exile are a nightmare for certain character builds. But these guys are tough no matter what.
Main game
- Oak in Act 2's bandit quest. He's incredibly strong, and he has a leap attack that instantly sends him to his target. This leap attack has almost no cooldown either, so expect to see him leaping around like a rabbit the entire fight. He's even harder to deal with if you like using a lot of fire skills. Expect to find yourself joining random parties just to deal with him. He's actually become even worse as the years went on, because buffs to how warcries worked affected him too, resulting in him becoming borderline unkillable to some builds.
- Merveil, the end boss of Act 1, is this for some players, especially those who are new to the game. At first, it seems like she just attacks the player with many powerful frost-based magic attacks, but upon defeating her, her true form appears and she not only completely regenerates her health, but also becomes a summoner-type boss (alongside being an ice-mage) that will endlessly spawn Mooks to constantly annoy you; some even being suicidal-bomber types which will instantly destroy a chunk of health if the player let even one get too close. To top it all off, she has a shield that will regenerate if players hold off on attacking for too long, and in the second fight against a summoner-ice-mage, expect it to happen A LOT. Long story short, players are in for a long, drawn-out, fight against Merveil if they're not stocked up on cold-resist, or they're short on any area-of-effect type attacks to keep the summoned pets at bay.
- In the earlier days of the game, Kole in the Lunaris Temple was a known Hardcore run killer. He's a Palette Swap of Brutus, and hits like a massive truck on higher difficulties. Fortunately, he's a skippable enemy.
- Players disappointed with Piety's relative ease have had complaints answered with High Templar Dominus. Boss Rush as first and second phases, Flunky Boss while being no slouch himself in third and fourth, and in said fourth phase, he can call a bloody death mist that instantly kills you unless you stand right next to him and his powerful melee attacks.
- Your first fight with Piety in the city ruins. She spams a spell (Chain Lightning) that causes a huge ball of energy to careen across the screen firing thunderbolts at anything nearby. If you have low lightning resistance, she's a nightmare.
- Piety in Act 4 is brutal for new players and the archenemy of any minion-dependent class. Still has all the things that make her frustrating in earlier acts, but she gains 6 assisting enemies that activate over time and begin spawning huge numbers of adds unless killed immediately. Further she gains a new lightning beam attack that sweeps the entire area, does enormous amounts of damage, and has no safe place to hide from it. You're meant to keep running in circles around her while she uses it, which often stops you from attacking (letting her energy shield regenerate) and will kill all your summons, spectres, and totems. And sometimes she'll be next to a wall when she does it so you can't run behind her either, requiring you to jump the beam with a dash. What really makes her a bane though is that, because of the level design and mechanics, you have to fight her every time you go through the area and, unlike most major bosses, the next waypoint is not by the start of the next area but in the middle of it, requiring a good slog through one of the game's tougher areas just to find it. Until you do, you're not done with Piety.
- Malachai can make Dominus seem like a walk in the park, at least when it comes to tactics. He rarely gives any breathing room in his attacks, constantly spawning projectiles and creating stuff on the floor that damages you if you stay there, forcing you to be one the move during the whole fight, and if you do find a safe spot then he'll just teleport to you and unleash a devastating shockwave if you don't move away. There's only one attack that gives you an opening and even then you need to mind all the damaging stuff he spawned beforehand.
- Izaro in the Endgame Labyrinth, especially in the final room. Izaro himself is tough, since he charges at you, fires shockwaves at you, or has a screen-sized ground slam, depending what weapon he's wielding that day, and the ground slam especially is a guaranteed one-shot kill against all but the most durable characters. He also has a phenomenal amount of health, taking most characters a long time to wear down. The Goddess is even deadlier, chiming in with her mortar bombardment, which is quite capable of instantly killing more fragile characters if they get caught in the middle of it, and will occasionally teleport anyone close to Izaro into a large number of traps. Further, unlike Izaro, she cannot be distracted or taunted and will never target minions or totems, always aiming for the player. And in the final room he may or may not have impossible-to-remove buffs from his two previous fights and the arena is covered in traps, decreasing the space you have to get out of the way. This is one of the most-complained about fights in the game for a reason.
- Innocence is a pretty good introduction to what you're in for in regards to the bosses in The Fall of Oriath. While High Templar Avarius was manageable, Innocence is basically the Shaper Lite, constantly filling the screen with AoE attacks, almost all of which can do over 900 damage even on characters with the most armor you can have at that point in the game, meaning that he can nearly-one shot even characters who heavily built their characters around life. You will be hearing the words "I am the ___" many, many times before you finally kill this bastard. What really makes Innocence stand is, aside from Doedre the Vile and Kitava (both mentioned below), none of the new Act midbosses and end bosses are nearly as hard as he is.
- Doedre the Vile is an unholy fusion of Puzzle Boss and Damage-Sponge Boss. She has by far the biggest Energy Shield of any enemy you've encountered thus far, and due to the main gimmick of constantly switching the cauldron fluid she uses to attack, she will always become invincible for several seconds as she absorbs the fluid, meaning that the already massive energy shield is constantly regenerating. Said gimmick? The cauldron in the middle of the arena is constantly filling with either a red, green or purple fluid. The red fluid causes Doedre to spam her exploding blood orb attack, the green fluid causes her to spawn hard hitting zombies, and the purple fluid continuously spawns AoE clouds that rapidly drain your health. You think you can just leave the cauldron on one phase the whole fight so Doedre doesn't go invincible? Nope. Every few seconds like the current fluid is active, you're slapped with a steadily increasing debuff that effectively doubles the damage you take from all sources, and the only way to remove it is to change the cauldron's fluid. Thankfully her massive energy shield was nerfed considerably in subsequent updates, but you still have to deal with that damn cauldron.
- The final battle against Kitava. Even the most hardcore players agree that this fight is absolutely ridiculous. While all of his attacks are telegraphed, he performs them so quickly that even those with max move speed will be struggling to avoid them. As the fight goes on, he will start constantly summoning minions who are just as capable of shredding your health as he is. Finally, when he's done to the final phase of the fight, he'll start spamming an incredibly powerful flame AoE that, due to both the incredibly small arena and how the attack blends into the arena itself, is very difficult to determine where it will hit. This fight is even more difficult than most early map bosses, up until the Conquerors.
Patches and expansions
- Patch 3.1 introduces the Abyssal Lords, two rare bosses that can be randomly found at the end of the Abyssal Depths. Both of them are utterly harrowing fights, demanding good single-target and clearing damage under rather strict time limits with destroying Stygian Spires in order to defeat. They also love to shield themselves and summon veritable armies of abyssal enemies to assist them.
- Synthesis introduces five boss encounters, the hardest of which is The Cortex. Four back-to-back boss encounters with brand new mechanics, seperated by a challenging minion phase is bad enough. However, the way that the map mods for the Cortex are generated means it is extremely likely to get very punishing combinations, such as triple Extra Damage as (Element), curses, and so on, with no way to reroll them. This results in a boss fight that is almost impossible unless you look up footage of it first, as the attacks are very difficult to avoid if you don't know they're coming, and a triple-mod will oneshot all but the tankiest classes.
End-game maps
- Sirus, the Awakener has become extremely notorious within the playerbase for how difficult and broken he is. Even at the best of times, he hits incredibly hard and many of his abilities have a multitude of unpleasant status effects, to the point where people deem a Corrupted Blood Immunity Jewel - a semi-rare corruption outcome - to be outright mandatory to fighting him. However, several attacks are seen as straight up unfair, such as dropping a rain of meteors on you with no audio warning and only a half second of visual warning, or his fan-dubbed "DIE Laser" - An extremely strong laser beam he has no compunctions about blasting you with from offscreen. He is also infamous for being extremely prone to glitches, such as unavoidable attacks, becoming straight up unhittable, his lasers firing in directions they shouldn't, and in some cases, dropping an extremely damaging storm on the door you enter from, rendering it impossible to retry the fight. To top that all off, the way to encounter him pre-Siege Of The Atlas required you to complete 24 high level maps and 4 other boss fights at an absolute minimum to get another chance at fighting him (This number can exceed 40 maps if luck is not on your side). This has been changed to only require a fragment from each of the aformentioned four bosses, which can be done at your leisure and can be saved up for multiple consecutive attempts.
- Urmod, the Fiend of Flood, despite being the boss of a mere tier 3 map, is more than willing to punish any player that underestimates him. His arena is constantly, well, flooded with water orbs that deal high damage and slows you if they hit you, and one of his main attacks, a quick blast of water jets, is capable of dealing more than 3k+ damage even on players with max armor and resistances. And he can chain up to three of these jet attacks in a rapid fire that will shred you from the complete opposite side of the map!
