Excluding countless tries to get to him while leveling up… I think about something around 5-10.
The most brutal part is the camera though 
Not seeing him when he is south (and also not being able to target him, while he does it with ease) is the biggest problem.
But in my personal opinion this is a general problem of the game and hopefully will be improved.
Got 'im first try. 
Almost died about three/four? times though, while learning the moves 
Very defensive build, lots of healing and consumables. Was a long fight.
Level 22/23 after upgrading all that new heavy armor. Greatshield and scimitar.
No luck involved with looting, but enchantment spam until i got decent rolls, with items bought from the smith.
Block build w/ health, focus and stamina on block seems to work decently (its no Focus rush build, but it’s fun - a little more interactive, as you can’t block everything and just for so long).
A lot! The most important thing to winning is practice. For that reason I really think they should put a whisper in front of the boss gate. It’s annoying having to run those 7 rooms over and over for another chance and then dying in some ridiculous way. The absolute greatest danger in those proceeding rooms is those damn ledges.
Too many.
Prior to the patch, maybe its an exaggeration, but I think I went through 2 and a half stacks of Fallen Ember trying to beat the crucible. So about 50+ attempts. Never won once. Not even close.
Granted, I was also being stubborn. A popular consensus was that, “your first character is always going to be a dud”, because of how you have to learn the game first. I refused that, and didnt want my first character to just be a throwaway, even though it had stats allocated in areas that I wasnt touching
My first couple attempts were because I was severly under prepared and kept getting washed by the regular mobs. After understanding them, my next almost 2 and half dozen death were because I kept dying to the “platform souls” nature of the game, and how my character would auto yeet themselves off the side, or the character wouldnt jump when I wanted them too and Id plummet to my death, or I got knocked off the edge either by the enemy or because I used an ability that sent my character too far forward or too far back. After not dying to constantly to the environment, and making it to the boss…I stood no chance.
Constantly got 1 tapped (or 2 if I was lucky). Leather + Mesh combination armor did absolutely nothing to help. Strength stat was high, but not quite high enough to really do much to him. Finally got some good plate armor with decent enchant, reduced the weight further with gems, and stood…more of a chance, but still got dusted.
Around 60 pre patch attempts. 0 successes.
Post patch 2, allocated my stats, took about 6ish attempts to finally beat him, and that was only after trying not to do it organically, and just going with a “meta” way to do it. Just plate armor with a lot of weight reduction so I could actively stay alive but still be nimble, most of my stats poured into one thing, and do something that helps getting his stagger up quickly. It wasnt exactly fun, and I feel like I was forcibly geared towards playing a certain type of way just to stand a chance. Having any number of stats in any other category felt like it was a huge detriment to my character, and anything less than plate felt like it wasnt helpful unless I was facing regular mobs.
It also helps that my rings finally felt like they were working post patch 2.
Man that is kinda a depressing story ngl 
I fell a lot too btw, in the end I switched to walking more often to prevent my toon from diving to it’s death, you can almost hear him scream Geronimooooo !!! or something…
I think the EK fight is rather gimmicky tbh, all the other bosses although maybe a bit too easy were better designed than this one imo.
I felt forced too into a build and use weapons I normally wouldn’t either.
I didn’t have much focus but spamming focus potions saved me I think.
The whole fight I just spammed a fast attack rune with a weapon with frost enchantment on it. Basically stunlocking him most of the fight.
Not fun but effective.
I just beat him the last 3 out of 4 times with two different builds. I have been experimenting a lot with my builds to find what works. It’s hard to avoid the fact you need to use weapon arts and learning the fight is the absolute key to winning. Once you learn how and when he attacks it’s much easier. Practice really does make perfect. Which is why, I’ve said said it before and I’ll say it again, there needs to be a whisper at the gate. I dislike running the crucible just to get another shot at him.
Yeh with a whisper this fight would have been 100 times more fun to learn indeed.
Let’s say 4-6 attempts. Can’t remember the loot, but I believe it was good. Just not gear I could actually use tho, lol.
Yeah I definitely started walking a bit more and not using moves until I was in wide circles. Sometimes I still encountered a weird bug though where it was almost like an invisible object was in my path and my character would just vert off to the side for no reason, and because the path is so narrow I either did, or almost fell off. It is what it is.
He kinda is in a weird way. I think the only thing that makes EK harder than the other bosses is the reaction time. I think the other bosses only feel easier is because you have a window to breathe and think. With EK, there is no opportunity it feels like. Even when you get a small window to like try and down a focus potion or quickly heal, the animations take so long to finish, that by the time your almost done, hes already starting up his next attack. Thats really the only primary problem I have with EK. His reaction time is too quick that I barely have time to analyze whats goin on in my screen. Looking away from one thing, means Im at danger of something else.
This is exactly what I did too, and exactly what I meant. I stopped trying to fight him organically like I would every other mob, and instead just pinpointed a very specific build that I knew worked. I respec’d into one thing, and focused on focus. Downing a bunch of focus potions, and eating a bunch of food that also restored focus. Spamming frost rune moves (and I pray they dont nerf this too), just to stunlock him, just so I could have a chance to breathe and think for a bit. I didnt feel like I could face him any other way. It was either this or bust.
Took me about 5 or 6 tries, with a ranger, i didn’t try yet on melee. I’m building a plate tank with spear and as much life steal as possible, will try it out 
.
After patch 2 you cannot stagger him with the current weapons (reduced base damage across the board?) which makes the fight even more difficult. Hopefully, the tier 4 and above gear can gives more ways to deal with these OP bosses.
The current iteration of the Crucible is just a placeholder. It and the EK’s involved will be seeing a lot of adjustments in the 1.0 release. The current EK is just fine I think. It is the only sort of “endgame” currently available in this EA build so it shouldn’t be too easy.
Have they changed two-handed club/great club stagger dmg? I haven’t tried it yet, but i watched someone do a great club build (faith and str) and it staggered him 2 times per phase.
I would just assume, that heavy weapons deal more stagger/poise dmg than light weapons and runes. At least that would be logical.
When I was originally trying to learn him I had about 500 armor in a light-load build, and his range attack (plague damage?) would hit for more than 50% of my health and stagger me, which was usually a quick death sentence.
I’m curious how other light-load builds have handled him. Can you stack resistance to survive a mistake? I’m sure you can go the dual-dagger focus spam route but I’m hoping there’s a more natural feeling route. Learning that fight with the forced crucible runs when 1 mis-step is fatal just sucks.
I agree. I find the rewards lack luster for such a crazy boss.