Best builds and strategies to beat Blackjaw the Remnant in Path of Exile 2 – Destructoid

Blackjaw the Remnant is one of the more difficult campaign bosses present in the Path of Exile 2 campaign. If you’re struggling to defeat him or require some advice, here’s the best way to deal with this potent boss encounter.

How to defeat Blackjaw the Remnant in Path of Exile 2

To formulate a plan of action to defeat Blackjaw the Remnant, you must first understand exactly what kind of boss he is.

Blackjaw is very slow, with large telegraphs (attack cues) for each of his attack chains. To compensate for this, most of his moveset has built-in AoE (area of effect), meaning even if you dodge one of his initial attacks, you’ll often be struck by the AoE portion anyway. Blackjaw hits hard due to his slow speed, so avoiding these moves is imperative to bringing him down.

Most likely, if you’re struggling to defeat Blackjaw, it’s because you’re not taking advantage of his critical weakness: his impressively poor tracking. Blackjaw has a hard time landing his big attacks on you if you remain in melee range of him. This is such a major weakness that you often don’t even need to actively dodge the attacks Blackjaw throws out if you’re close. Ideally, you’ll want to stay behind him at all times, as most of his wide-spanning attacks can’t reach you from that angle.

With this strategy, the one attack you still need to be wary of is when he ignites the ground around himself. The fire he spews can harm you, but more importantly, this is a telegraph for a follow-up combo attack that will hurl firebolts in your direction. Avoid these flames and then return to melee range with Blackjaw as soon as the attack ends. Failure to do so could see you nailed with one of his other powerful moves immediately after, which will likely spell the end of your attempt.

Best builds for fighting Blackjaw the Remnant in Path of Exile 2

While most builds can eventually deal with Blackjaw due to the lack of a time limit associated with the fight, it’s ideal to use a build to end this encounter as quickly as possible, as even a single mistake can be fatal.

From a damage standpoint, Blackjaw is critically vulnerable to cold damage, able to bypass a significant amount of his heavy armor. Builds focusing on cold damage should have no problem taking him down quickly.

Speaking of armor, builds that focus on breaking through steel can be quite effective against Blackjaw. His slow speed means he’s very easy to hit, and with no armor, Blackjaw suffers greatly against most damage types. Armor shred is the name of the game if you’re going this route and using physical damage against him. Enemies that have their armor broken take more physical damage, so this works out well.

Builds using Poison as their main damage type should be using the Corrosion support gem for their main poison skill. This gem allows your poison damage to shred away armor, which results in a higher Poison Magnitude, which means more damage against Blackjaw.

Builds focusing on non-poison Chaos damage are strong against Blackjaw because the Chaos damage type is one of the least resisted in the entire game. Blackjaw has meager resistance against Chaos damage, but if you want to strip it entirely for your build, I recommend using either the Despair curse skill or Withering Presence aura. Enemy resistance cannot go below zero in Path of Exile 2, so don’t overkill it by using both.

For all of the above-mentioned build setups, whether you’re playing melee or ranged should not matter against Blackjaw. What’s more important is the execution of the strategy I mentioned above. Stay up close and personal; stay behind him as much as possible, and you’ll fell Blackjaw the Remnant with surprising ease.