PoE 2 Pinnacle Boss Guide: Arbiter of Ash

How to Find the Arbiter of Ash

The Arbiter of Ash is a pinnacle boss in Path of Exile 2, found within the walls of the Fortress at The Burning Monolith

The Arbiter of Ash can be faced after travelling to the Western and Eastern Gateways and collecting the two other Crisis Fragments required to open the Sealed Passageway to the boss arena. This guide explains the full process: PoE 2 Endgame Fortress Walkthrough

Once the Quest Arbiter of Ash has been defeated, players can seek out Citadels scattered throughout the Atlas to collect new Crisis Fragments and fight a stronger version of the Arbiter of Ash

Running the Encounter

Once inside you will find a grassy overgrown area with a Mysterious Obelisk inside. Clicking it will rotate the stones and provide you with ominous and vague lore. Continue past it to the Sealed Passageway to find the sockets for the Crisis Fragments.

As you select each Crisis Fragment the corresponding socket will light up, making placing them correctly a simple task. Click Activate when you are ready and an elevator will take you down to the Arbiter of Ash.

Things to Know Before You Enter

1. Bring an Dousing Charm as the Arbiter deals an enormous amount of Fire damage. Surviving an Ignite might be the difference between success and failure.
2. Capped Fire Resistance is extremely important, and consider grabbing some Ruby Jewels with +(1-2) Maximum Fire Resistance. The difference between having 80% Fire Resistance and 75% Fire Resistance is 20% less damage taken and can make the fight much more comfortable.
3. High Movement Speed on boots is mandatory. You won’t be able to survive the phase two attacks without excellent mobility.
4. Consider an off-hand Blink setup for the highest two tiers of Arbiter. Currently the gaps between the Flame Seed Donut Nuke attack can spawn absurdly far apart and characters without Blink can be left in situations where it’s impossible to reach the next safe lane.
5. As of patch 0.1.1, this fight allows multiple chances if you die on lower tiers. This means if you fail you will be given multiple additional attempts without losing access to the fight at Tier 0, all the way up to only one chance at Tier 4. If you fail and restart, all of the Arbiter’s health will be restored.

The Arbiter of Ash will only perform two attacks during his first phase, which is before he takes damage. If your build has a heavy skill rotation and setup requirement you can take advantage of this time to ramp your damage provided you don’t hit him.

Basic Attack

This is a very basic single fire projectile that moves slowly and is easy to dodge. It does primarily fire damage, and not a lot of it.

Basic Claw Fireball

Arbiter will stretch out his Claw and a beam of fire will erupt from the tip. The hitbox for this skill is fairly small, so you can be relatively close to the beam without taking damage. This will hit reasonably hard if you fail to dodge it, but it’s another very easy to avoid attack.

Bullet Hell

The Arbiter will show two red hot balls that litter the arena with small fire projectiles. These can shotgun you for huge damage if you aren’t careful. Once you see the Arbiter telegraph this attack run through or past them – they will continue the direction they were originally fired and the safest place is on the other side of the arena.

• Run behind for easy dodging of the fire projectiles. They will continue towards wherever you were when they were cast.
• The gaps get large as the initial projectiles move away from you.

Black Flame Seed + Chill Seed

Black Flame Seed materializes at the same time as the Chill Seed. If left alone, it will empower the Arbiters sword dealing additional damage. Walk over and touch the seed to destroy it. Once you’ve touched it, if you haven’t yet touched the Chill seed the arena will be covered with a very weak burning ground that will ignite you. If the Chill seed has already been touched, it will clear the arena and power down his sword.

The Chill Seed is a light blue orb that materializes the same time as the Black Flame Seed. If left alone, it will empower the Arbiters weapon and chill you on hit. To clear it you need to run over the orb. If the Black Flame seed is still around, this will cover the arena in chilled ground slowing you down. If you’ve already cleared the Black Flame seed, it will clean the arena of the burning ground.

Be sure to clear these together.

Flame Seeds

A small fireball that deals no damage will descend with a ring of fire around it, indicating you need to be inside it before it goes off. The Arbiter can attack with other skills while you are in this circle, I’ve named them all below starting with Flame Seed. The explosion that occurs outside of the ring is enormous and will kill you, appropriately named the Donut Nuke on the skill card for the Arbiter.  

Flame Seeds - Cascading Donut Nukes

Several sequential Donut Nukes will happen forcing you to travel from ring to ring before being caught in an explosion. These will be accompanied by attacks from the Arbiter, all prefixed with Flame Seed below. For the most part they don’t hit hard except the Forward Blast.

Immediately before the attack the Arbiter will telegraph WHERE the rings will be. He performs a series of very fast movements and projectiles will erupt towards the ceiling from him. Pay attention to the sequencing if you want a hint on where the donut nukes will drop.

CAPTION: Projectiles will shoot from the Arbiter for each of the flame seeds that will drop, you can use where they erupt as a hint for where the flame seeds will drop.

Flame Seeds - Auto-Attack

Same as the fireball auto-attack with the claw and pretty easy to dodge even inside the ring.

Flame Seeds - Basic Claw Fireball

Same as the Basic Claw Fireball in the pre-damage phase but this time you have to dodge it while dealing with the donut nukes. The hitbox for the beam isn’t large, though this skill hits for a lot of fire damage over time.

Flameblast Hallways

This is by far the most dangerous attack the Arbiter of Ash performs. He can use this attack during both Phase One and Phase Two. To start you’ll first see faint purple lines indicating a safe zone and will have very little time to react. Quickly dodge-roll or blink into it to avoid a one-shot death from the rest of the arena. Any hesitation and you will die.

At 66% life the Arbiter will sprout wings. During this phase he will be able to perform multiple attacks at the same time, forcing you to deal with Donut Nukes while also requiring that you avoid Slams and other attacks. You can tell he’s entered this phase when he retrieves his sword from the ground and afterwards a long animation of him pulling it out while sprouting wings. He cannot be attacked while phasing.

Sword Auto-Attack

This is a two-swipe sword attack where the Arbiter will press forward with his sword aggressively. Time your dodge-rolls well and they are easy to avoid, wait for the start of the lunge to hit the dodge-roll.

Pulsing Ball

The Arbiter will wrap his wings around his sword and fly away to reveal a large pulsing ball of flame which emits waves of fireballs. These fireballs will pulse outward while the Arbiter performs other attacks; you’ll need to dodge-roll or blink through the waves in order to escape damage. During this attack he will continue to attack you with other skills.

If you touch one of the fireballs it will pop the entire ring spreading out in a fan, and they deal a decent amount of damage. It can be massively distracting, keep your eye on the Arbiter.

CAPTION: Rings of fireballs will spread towards the edges, dodge-roll through them and keep an eye out for secondary attacks.

Sword Slam

The Arbiter will telegraph this attack by leaping into the air, coupled with one of a few voice lines. He’ll take his sword and slam it down. If you notice him leap into the air just keep moving and it’s easy to avoid. Once he starts his downward motion timing a dodge-roll out can be extremely tight.

Chasm Slash

The Arbiter will split the entire arena with a line of fire. This is pretty easy to avoid and if you need to cross you can dodge-roll through the fire wall to take minimal damage. Where this becomes more annoying is when combined with other attacks like the Pulsing Ball.

Sword Beam

Quite wide but easy to dodge.  The Arbiter will spin his sword in your direction; jump out of the way to avoid a large AoE column that will deal fire damage over time.

Flame Seeds - Cleave

The Arbiter will take advantage of the small ring again and drop a heavy sword attack that deals fire damage in a straight line. You can kite to the edge of the ring or exit the ring before the attack lands; this one seems to primarily hit after the donut nuke has gone off.

Flame Seeds - Ground Slam

The Arbiter will jump out of sight and then slam the center of the Flame Seed ring. This attack doesn’t deal a lot of damage, but you can avoid it entirely if you see the beam indicating he will drop and then jumping into the ring after the fire subsides.

Flame Seeds - Forward Blast

The hardest hitting of the secondary attacks during the Phase Two Donut Nuke sequences. You have two choices, the easiest is to face tank it by equipping several +1-2 Maximum Fire Resistance jewels and having 3.5-4k spare EHP, ideally 6k or more but at 85% Fire Resistance I measured the damage to be around 3.5k including the Ignite.

The second option is to mechanically dodge it by waiting for the blast to occur then at the last moment dodge-rolling into the ring. The window for doing this is small but is doable if you’ve practiced the timing. Importantly you’ll need to watch for the Arbiter’s sword lining up the blast or you won’t have a choice in face-tanking it.

CAPTION: Easiest option is gearing your character up to face-tank this mechanic with Maximum Fire Resistance Ruby jewels.

CAPTION: To manually dodge it, start outside the ring and let the blast subside before dodge-rolling in.

• Solus Ipse
• Morior Invictus
• Sine Aequo
• Ab Aeterno
• Sacred Flame
• Prism of Belief (Jewel)
  • +(1–2) to Level of Random Skill (item level 76 from Quest Arbiter of Ash)
  • +(1–3) to Level of Random Skill (item level 84 from Uber Arbiter of Ash)
• Arbiter's Reliquary Key

Additional Possible Drops

• Arbiter's Ignition