Like any good dungeon crawler, Path of Exile includes hundreds of types of monsters to slay. Throughout the campaign and Mapping endgame, players will come across a whole assortment of monsters and bosses that drop unique loot to allow for more insane builds.
Path of Exile isn’t an easy game, however. Players need to spend time theory crafting builds and mastering boss mechanics if they hope to make it far. As early as the first Act, players will be bombarded with bosses that are more reminiscent of bullet-hell boss fights than aRPG bosses. Ranging from early-game bosses to the Maven herself, here are the ten hardest bosses in Path of Exile.
Updated February 17th, 2021 by Charles Burgar: Path of Exile has seen additional bosses added to the game since this article was originally written. Players might have gotten stronger, but boss fights have also gotten more hectic. To account for this, we’ve replaced some weaker bosses with these more deadly adversaries.
10 Brutus, Lord Incarcerator
For veteran Path of Exile players, Brutus is an easy boss that takes little trouble to take down. Those who are newer to Path of Exile will have a different story.
Brutus is a boss players fight halfway through the first Act. His attacks are slow but deal considerable amounts of damage, most of which cover a large area. That alone isn’t an issue. The problem is Brutus has multiple forms of area denial that can be out simultaneously. Get too close? Three swift ground punches will end you. Run away? A set of spikes will spring from the ground, dealing constant damage in that area for a short time. Ranged characters? Prepare to get grabbed by his deadly hook.
Veteran players will use good movement techniques and high-damage skills to kill Brutus quickly. Newer PoE players won’t understand all of these mechanics, resulting in them hitting a wall at this boss. Act 1’s final boss, Merveil, is easier than this guy.
9 Bameth, Shifting Darkness
Bameth is a prime example of how one mechanic can make a boss terrifying. This Beyond demon has a chance of spawning if enough enemies die near each other while the Beyond modifier is active. Surface level, he seems easy. Bameth uses a bow and keeps his distance from you.
What makes him terrifying is his Vaal Detonate Dead skill, causing every corpse nearby to detonate in a massive chain. This instantly kills most builds, even those with over 10,000 Life or Energy Shield. Your best chance of avoiding this is to kill Bameth before he gets a chance to turn the Map into a nuclear explosion.
8 Sirus, Awakener Of Worlds
One of Path of Exile’s final bosses, Sirus demands patience in a game focused on break-neck clearspeed.
Storms will cover most of the arena, dealing a ludicrous amount of damage if you’re near one. Avoiding those, Sirus will frequently teleport off-screen and attempt to one-shot you with his “Die” beam attack. Surviving that, Sirus will spawn frequent environmental hazards such as meteors or beams. If you play this fight slow, Sirus is a pushover of a boss. Play it recklessly, however, and Sirus will prove to be one of the hardest fights the game has to offer.
7 Omniphobia, Fear Manifest
Delirium league increased the difficulty of Path of Exile considerably. As players fight deeper into the delirious fog, more dangerous nightmares begin to form.
On higher rounds in The Simulacrum or in 100% delirious Maps, players might stumble across Omniphobia. This boss can instantly kill most players with a powerful slam, has more health than The Shaper and Elder combined, and can regenerate all of his Life and Energy Shield back in a flash. He has no flashy mechanics like most bosses, but his effective health pool and damage output are enough to destroy even the toughest of builds.
6 Uber Elder
Before Sirus and Conquerers were added to Path of Exile, Uber Elder was the game’s final boss. Years later, many still consider this fight a true test of skill and a build’s merits.
This fight combines the Elder and Shaper fights into one with a few new mechanics. Elder minions will frequently spawn during the fight, requiring a great mix between mob and boss management. Once you understand this fight, it’s incredibly engaging and fair to the player. It is a great example of a hard yet fair boss fight.
5 Uber Atziri
To this day, few builds can take on Atziri, Queen of the Vaal. This boss creates copies of herself that reflect damage back at the user, resulting in most meta builds incapable of killing her safely.
She can spawn from The Apex of Sacrifice map, the Temple of Atzoatl as a Level 3 Royal Meeting Room, or The Alluring Abyss. Those who enter The Alluring Abyss Map must fight Uber Atziri, a version of her that has much more health and damage output. Get caught in her Flameblast attack and you can kiss your character goodbye.
4 Oshabi, Avatar of the Grove
Harvest league’s final boss is none other than Oshabi herself. This fight is infamous for how overturned and unrewarding it is.
Oshabi will apply physical ground degens throughout the fight, dealing upwards of 2,000 physical damage per second. Most Righteous Fire Other attacks from her can one-shot most builds if they aren’t careful. Unless it’s for a challenge, taking on Oshabi isn’t worth the hassle.
3 Hall Of Grandmasters
Summoners, hit-based builds, and the clearest speed builds are going to struggle to complete the Hall Of Grandmasters Map. This Map is so hard that most players purchase carries from others to get Atlas completion.
While this isn’t a single boss, the Hall of Grandmasters pits the player against characters that purchased the Grandmaster Supporter Pack. Effectively, this is a boss gauntlet. PvP scaling is also enabled, resulting in any summoner build instantly dying. Most characters dodge or block, making most hit-based builds obsolete. If you thought Rogue Exiles were tough, try to complete the Hall of Grandmasters.
2 The Maven
There’s no contest: the Maven is the hardest final boss ever introduced in Path of Exile. This fight demands a min-maxed build, excellent player skill, quick thinking, and the ability to memorize patterns. If you don’t fit one of these criteria, the Maven will be nigh-unkillable.
This fight takes queues from nearly every boss in the game, applying a massive number of projectiles in the arena that keep you on the move. Telegraphed beam and gatling orb attacks can take down builds with hundreds of thousands of EHP. She also has a memory game that will instantly kill you if you don’t repeat the pattern she presents. And that’s just her first phase!
Past this, you’ll have to fight a random assortment of bosses from the Atlas as the Maven’s brain begins to fire debilitating beams at you. These beams disable all sources of recovering Life and Mana and reduce your maximum resistances by 10%. This is coupled with attacks that deal thousands of damage each that flood the arena and a telegraphed attack that one-shots you if you don’t get out of dodge. All of this is wrapped together in a tight arena with no add phases, so you can’t rely on flasks to save you here. If it wasn’t for the absurd scaling of our next entry, Maven is easily the hardest boss in Path of Exile.
1 Aul, The Crystal King
In the furthest depths of Delve, players can find Aul. Without modifiers, this boss seems to be a knight with no special mechanics and a love for Cold damage.
The reason Aul tops Maven is due to how Delve’s scaling works. As you progress into the Delve mine, global modifiers are added to make it harder. These modifiers get out of control at deeper delves, causing enemies to always crit and penetrate all of your resistances. If you couldn’t guess already, Aul gets these modifiers too.
When you get far enough in Delve, Aul will one-shot every non-immunity build in the game. You’ll not only have to face a devastating knight that can instantly freeze you, but you’ll also need to face trash mobs that can also instantly kill you. Due to the nature of Delve’s scaling system, Aul is the hardest boss you can fight in Path of Exile. Unless another boss gets scaling systems similar to Aul, it’s unlikely any boss will top him.
