Arbiter of Ash Fight Feedback

Spent last week looking for citadels and farming/buying items needed for Arbiter of Ash fight. Attempted runs: 5; completed runs: 0.

Before my first boss attempt I had to watch a guide in order to learn the attack patterns because I read that:
1) there are some attack patterns that one shot;
2) dying would mean having to farm again all the 3 components to access the boss fight (which as everyone know is time and/or resource consuming.

First attempt: died to firestorm because I was not ready to dodge, since seeing it for the first time I barely understood the Arbiter was gonna use that attack;
Second attempt: died again to firestorm, but not before dodging 3 of them before fainting because of a split-second indecison about the direction to roll;
Third attempt: finally saw another one shot attack pattern: dashing bombs, which I survived even if it was the first time seeing it. Then proceeded to faint in the next seconds because of firestorm (dodged 2-3 waves, then died without seeing the next safe zone);
Fourth attempt: changed a little bit of gear (support gems) and was able to input more damage on this attempt. Arbiter went 2nd phase without any one-shot patterns in the 1st phase. Then I died because of beambomb, which i never saw until that moment. Again, I knew what to do, but not being able to recognize the attack pattern easily caused my death. I still accept that because that's only the 4th attempt at this fight.
Fifth and last attempt, and this is why I'll stop doing Arbiter till some patch/nerf hits him: dealt him enough damage to bring him at ~50%hp, starting second phase, but not before he used the dashing bomb attack. That one for me is the easiest to dodge (explanation later), therefore I started rolling in the safe zones. At the same time, while dodging, the boss goes in second phase, and on top of the dashing bomb mechanic he uses ANOTHER one shot mechanic, the beambomb. While being in the safe spot of the dashing bombs, I died because of the other mechanic, and this is, I can confidently say it, bad design, even if unintended.

Conclusions: IMO, there are 2 major problems:
1) there should not be, in any way possible, an overlap of one-shot mechanics. Dunno if it is a "bug", or if the boss has not been tested enough. I know this is early access, I played a lot of early access games in the last year, but releasing the Endgame boss with such a flaw is a little bit disappointing;
2) the major problem with the firestorm mechanic is that it lacks visual indicators. Explaining better: to me, the dashing bomb is a flawless mechanic, because while standing and running to a safe spot, I can still see where the next one safe spot will be. With firestorm, instead, there is no such thing: you place yourself in the safe zone between the two fires, you survive it, then the screen is clean: no indicators on where the next safe spot will be. Given the fact you literally have such a little time to react, I find it underwhelming that the safe spot is not anticipated. I am not talking seconds, but even couple of hundreds of milliseconds would and will help.

Minor problems:
Probably, making dashing ball mechanic in such a way that the boss does not attack you or body-blocks you might benefit the fight as well.

About others non-one shot attack patterns, I have nothing to say (90% evasion, barely knwo how much damage they deal).

Concluding (yes, finally) by saying that the rest of the game is a blast and I am having a lot of fun: can't wait to see what comes next.

Edit: oh yea, I forgot: maybe give us more than 1 chance when fighting this boss at basic difficult (before 1st book drop), like there is an infinite token for attempting Sekhemas Trial and Chaos Trial until completed for the first time

PPS: patch 0.1.1
T1 first attamp of the fight. 6 Portals ... ALL lost do to:
- imposible to reach save spots in the bomb phase or
- overlapping insta-death attacks

PPPS: ultra wide screen 3440x1440 so I even see more left-right then normal ratio monitors. But some bombs had been so far spreed that I couldn't barly see them. Just a tiny bit of the cycle I have to get into!
How should someone without ultra-wide monitor even know where to go????

Just Tried it the first time with my level 94 Monk.

Damage was no problem. No one-shot nonsense but got him freezed instantly and after the freeze he had just 50% life left. Not to bad I'd say. Pritty sure IF I had a chance to get another combo out he would have died.

BUT I COULDN'T :( !

I saw videos about the fight before so I knew the machanics in theory.
- Get into the small cycle to avoid one shot
- Get into the wind-free passage to avoid one shot

BUT

With "just" 30% movement speed boots this is IMPOSIBLE if you are not very lucky :(. As at one point the fire bombs are so far away that it is not posible to reach them in time!
Do you, GGG, expect a char to have much much more then 30% movespeed? Aka spec heavily into move speed before we try the fight? Or are 35% boots a "MUST HAVE" for this fight?

Or 2 times I stand in the cycle and he use a half screen wide insta death beam-strike attack which covered the hole cycle!

Once I had the wind-phase but it was so fast that I couldn't even react more or less overlapping left-right and top-down winds.

Did I do anything wrong so he drasticly speeds up all effects??? Aka to much damage for a "normal" speed and he fires 3 phases at once? But not enough exploidy-DPS to insta kill him?

Sorry, but if this was all "as intended" ... this fight is TERRIBLE!
Just enother example that one of you at GGG has a real and heavy gambling addiction problem if the fight is "designed to need luck"!!
A hard complicate fight to learn ... no problem. I played Lost Arc Circus and finished it! It has far more patterns then Citadel of Flames.
But "LUCK" should never ever be a component in a ENDBOSS fight! NEVER!

Anyway. If this was all "as intended" ... the hole Citadel of Flames stuff is dead to me. Will never try it again. Non of the 4 Pinacle boss. Wast of time.


PS:
level 94, all res 75% including chaos, ~2300 life ~2500 es, 78% evasion 74% armour (thought ascend), enough damage to insta freez him after fight start and bring him down to 50% or less ... "just" 30% movespeed from boots.
If this is "not good enough" for the T1 fight of this boss ... realy no need to try it again as I refuse to use any bug-exploidy-insta-gib-builds!

Yes, I need some Ice Strike hits to get my one Bell out and enough Chages to activate Charged staff. But this is done quick enough to as said get him down to 50% or less before he can get out of my feeze.
So ... did I just got realy unlucky and 6 times BUGGED OUT fights?

I just want to kinda add to this. I think a lot of people (including me) were waiting for the "6 chances update" to try this boss, and I definitely have some... thoughts.

The fire circles: These were fine on most of my attempts, but I have 20% movespeed boots and some nodes in the tree. These would be absolutely cooked at any lower movespeed. Also, as a melee character, these just totally shut down my ability to deal damage because I have to go stand in them. And there's, like, 8 in a row.

The fire waves: These are pretty messed up. I lost 5 of my 6 portals to these. You have almost no time to react to where the safe spot is. This is borderline something I'd expect in PoE 1 because it's a faster paced game, but the speed at which these go off is so out of bounds relative to the rest of PoE 2, it's unreal. And, again, I can't imagine how this would be at lower movement speed.

The boss would do the fire circles (can't deal damage because melee) and then immediately transition into fire waves (can't deal damage because boss is invulnerable + real tight avoidance windows). That just completely turns off my damage for an absurdly long time.

Both of these are one shot mechanics. The boss did, like, 2 other attacks? The beam is kinda dangerous I guess, but it's weird that the only real threat on the boss are attacks that (I'm guessing from the telegraphs) guaranteed one shot. The few "normal" (melee, fireball, fire orb protectible spam) do almost no damage.

I really like most of the boss design in the game (super happy to see the buff to map boss spawn rates and the new map boss tablets), but this boss is pretty cooked.

I just used 2 times 6 portals for my first arbiter fight and I have watched Youtube tutiorials beforhand. If you get in there without any knowledge it is impossible to do unless you 2 shot him.

The first 6 portals were wasted becasue I couldn't get into the circles fast enough even with 30% MS boots.
I used blink for the second 6 portals where it was doable but even then I died to be 1 milimeter out of position. And sometetimes he spawn 2 bombs at the same time and in a blink of an eye you have to decide which one goes off first. Go to the wrong one, instant death.
And as other have said they are too spread out too. This mechanic doesn't make any sense.

Then the fire waves. I died to them multiple times because I was out of position by maybe 1 milimeter. Instand deatch again. This ability seems to not fit in the way the character handling works. The safe area is too small and the movement to clunky to get to the sage are 100% of the time.

Maybe I'm just too old for this, but I don't have any problem with any of the other bosses in the game and I like how most of the boss fights are designed.
But the arbiter seems way overtuned and unfun. And I was fighting him with difficulty 0.

While I managed to finish 2/2 after the changes that grant extra attempts, I have to say bombs are ridiculous. There's barely enough time to get in circle with 30ms boots and blink. Most of my failed attempts were arbiter body blocking and blink on cd, once I was not in time somehow with a blink from previous one because next one spawned too far and there was less than 2s between explosions and once bomb spawned off screen so I just didn't see it in time.

So thanks for the extra attempts, but the fight is complete garbage. One of the worst bosses in whole poe, easily alongside early sirus.

The Arbiter needs several FIXES:

- Fix timer between bombs so they don't nearly overlap

- maximum distance between followup bombs espezialy designed around 20ms boots for T1, 25ms boots for T2 and 30ms boots for T3+4 to garante even an heavy armour wearing Titan is able to get from one bomb to the next in time!
(keep in mind armour body + shield have movement penaltis)
-- aka minimum posible time between 2 follow up bombs
-- fixed maximum distance between 2 follow up bombs with better indicator where the next bomb will be

- make sure the bomb never overlap with his strike-beam attack. That's imposible to play and simply unfair!

- increase time between winds in that phase for T1 ramping it up to current speed in T4 (or abit slower for 55+ age people like me *g*)

Just remember: not everybody is a world class e-sports player like Elon Musk ^^.

Did my first attempt today and went 0/6 as well. I mirror the sentiments above. Bomb circles spawned so far away from each other that it was sometimes impossible to reach them in time. Hallways need clearer visual indication, a bit more delay between each blast, or the safezone always spawn close to your current location.

No boss should have a do this mechanic 100% perfectly or instantly die. This guy has multiple of them. At least change it to 50% life to give people a chance to actually fight the boss.

Failed my first attempt today as well. I can only speak to his first phase, as I was not able to get past the fire winds or whatever that is. I don't know how someone with boomer reflexes can get to the safe spots so quickly. Sometimes the safe zones spawn close to each other, sometimes quite far. At least if there was some kind of hint or pattern that would indicate on which side the next safe zone will be, it would be much easier to pre-move that way. I failed all my attempts pre-moving to a completely wrong direction, lol.

This boss is a waste of time unless you are doing millions in damage and can kill him before the mechanics start. Minion builds are useless, and the one shot mechanics are not fair at all. literally no time to move to safe areas even if you try to roll. Waste of time unless your build is broken DPS.