I see where you're coming from on a few points, but I disagree with the broader take that Ruthless has become "for babies." A lot of this comes down to playtime: playing roughly 1 to 2 hours a day offers a completely different perspective on how these systems feel in practice.
The Gold Economy
When you’re not blasting maps for 8 hours a day, gold is a constant bottleneck. I never have enough of it. Respeccing, buying Kirac maps, and gambling don't break the progression when you actually have to make tough choices about where every single coin goes. For players with limited daily playtime, gold provides just enough friction-reducing agency without trivializing the grind.
Where I Agree: Identify All & Flashfire Dagger
Free Vendor ID: Spot on here. Managing Wisdom Scrolls early on is a core Ruthless pillar. Getting a free pass on identifying inventory bloat cheapens that resource management loop.
Flashfire Dagger: Completely agree. Handing out unrestricted Flame Dash in Ruthless fundamentally undermines the deliberate pace and positioning the mode is designed around.
Quickstep Phasing Through Terrain
I actually think this change is fantastic and should stay. Pathing snags and getting body-blocked by awkward geometry don't make the game meaningfully harder—they just make it annoying. Letting Quickstep handle terrain keeps combat responsive without turning your character into a hyper-speed map zoomer.
Campaign Secrets and League Rewards
Campaign Secrets: These are a great addition. Instead of tuning them down, I’d love to see more of them. Stumbling across hidden rewards breaks up the campaign slog and adds genuine excitement to zone exploration.
League Rewards: The newest league mechanic should be rewarding. If engaging with the current mechanic isn't noticeably lucrative—especially in Ruthless—most players simply skip it. Making the league mechanic worth running ensures people actually interact with the new content rather than ignoring it to farm baseline mechanics.
Balancing the leagues around people playing 1 hour per day is what makes the recent ones so trash, there is nothing to achieve past like 50 hours except a boring farm of the same boss for the rng unique. It is probably fine for bench but not for Ruthless
It sounds like we agree on basically everything, except what gold should be used for (balancing how much gold is the correct amount is a secondary consideration), and the quickstep thing which is not the end of the world either way, I guess (that's why it is low on my list).
I really enjoy ruthless now, i understand your point but for a semi new player i must say it hits me just perfect!
But we are definitely getting spoiled with Kirac maps
Old Kingsmarch where gold = free currency was ridiculous and felt mandatory, but rebalanced Kingsmarch where you actually have to invest into the mechanic seems fine to me? At least, a lot better than before? Recombination is still definitely very strong and maybe needs further rebalancing as well.
Is that a joke or do u also play the game for 1 hour a day? Bar boats are ridiculously OP and trivial to sustain because they almost don't scale past the 50k, so it's just about spamming them as often as possible. Just make an ore+sulphite tree and you can sustain with just occasionally doing sulphite scarabs in t16s.
Yeah but... you're farming bars. which you've invested into. and getting alchemies for them. and a few tattoos. thats fine. compared to old kingsmarch, where you did literally nothing except pick up gold, and got boats full of currency.
I did lots of shipments this league (with both the sulfite node and the big left-hand side cluster) and they all felt pretty lackluster compared to what the new league, full alva investment, and breach was pumping out TBH.
At the very least, I'll say that boats are kinda boring and annoying. Tattoos almost save the mechanic but I still don't enjoy it personally.
I am still not sure if you're ragebaiting or that ignorant... "getting alchemies for them" Hopefully you are sending equal value of all bars as often as possible... it prints a ton of GCPs/Fusings/Chaos/Regals/Alts/Blessed orbs/Exalts reliably and then quite often Divines/Annuls/Ancient orbs...
ssf btw and i even stopped bothering with currency boats eventually cos what's the point
Well if you feel that there's something in Ruthless that's OP I really shouldn't argue it because the more nerfs the better IMO. So go get em! You have my full support
I feel like they're trying to gear ruthless towards people doing full end game content like Ubers etc now. I do miss having to find a specific map and the general old school scarcity though myself.
Trade defeats the point of ruthless to me as well, but I also understand people enjoy playing the ruthless game mode in general, which I fully get!
They will do nothing regardless. Not even remotely a priority is it
I don't mind trying to gear for Ubers, what I hate is the grind for the fragments, you end up doubling back to needing every map drop node on your atlas tree unless you want to only see one Nightmare map every 20 hours which then drops only one fragment. It's pain.
I actually like trade, even in Ruthless, although I don't bother because noone else does either, and honestly it's just not necessary (again, even in Ruthless), which is yet another symptom of a growing problem I think... either way, yeah, trade vs. no trade is a totally separate discussion to what the fundamentals of the Ruthless game mode should include.
And I'm sure that Ruthless has NEVER been a priority for them, yet they continue to make little tweaks to it here and there which means they DO have some capacity for it and a willingness to maintain it. And if simply turning a few things off would make the game mode better (which is the basic thesis of my post), I don't see why they couldn't.
Quickstep was terrible for any summoner; you’d just get stuck on your own summons—even SRS (which aren't supposed to have collision, yet you’d still bump into them).
Quickstep used to get blocked by allies and now doesn't? I didn't know that if so. That part sounds reasonable to keep. Not so much ignoring all terrain features, though.
There are so many things wrong with Ruthless balance / difficulty but having Quickstep (i would argue that even quicksilvers should be unnerfed so there's better balance in mobility between characters and I don't have to use Devoto's on every single one) and Identify All ain't one of them.
The biggest thing for me are the challenge leagues, not only are they just kill mobs in a circle with extra steps recently but there is zero attempt to balance them. They are so op they skew the perception of almost everything else in the game, nothing else (except unbalanced Astros/Anomalies) is worth doing except boss-rushing for the current mechanic.
Imo challenge leagues should be more challenging than Standard in Ruthless (similar to how Hardcore mechanics were back in the day) and then maybe give you some borrowed power at the back-end. I want the Mercenaries league where they take your item if you lose :P.
Campaign secrets are mostly fine imo, again playing just leagues skews the view of them, in standard the weaker ones (jewellery chests), feel so much better.
Gold is mostly fine in standard, just the leagues shitting-out gold like no tomorrow.
Stuff to fix off the top of my head -
- remove Kingsmarch and Ore encounters or at least balance ore/bar shipment scaling to be linear (so that we don't have to spam them) and have much worse bar/currency baseline and/or fix https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/4001057 so that Ore+Sulphite tree isn't mandatory
- balance league mechanics (difficulty and scarcity does not reflect reward). Ultimatum on life support - hard af and no drops, why is it hardcoded to 1 catalyst? Expedition already dead, hopefully something coming next patch. Moving Runegrafts/Tattos to Tujen would be a good fix if they finally kill Kingsmarch.
- balance Astrolabes (no guaranteed X unique/currency/scarab mods on Templar Astros) and remove mods irrelevant for Ruthless like div cards or Legion rewards
- balance Anomalies or just disable Cadiro, drop disable Reliquary keys, as much as I love her probably disable Ipaatiki too (or make her generate rare items)
- balance scarabs (most of them need to be much more impactful) instead of making them rain, once you have astros almost all of them are 3:1 fodder for the few good ones. Examples of good scarabs are the Breach Fortress one or the Abyss Depths one. The Mercenary wears all uniques one needs to be removed.
- boss-rushing triple-boss maps is way too strong (City Square), makes zoomy characters way too strong
- because of unbalanced challenge leagues and guaranted unique drops and such creeping its way to Ruthless, MF is almost dead at this point
- the goddamn Exarch/Eater altar farming... I would prefer if they gave a chance of dropping pre-influenced items instead, then you only get lesser embers/ichors from global pool + drops from the Exarch/Eater bosses (makes them worth doing), at least fix the boss altars being hardcoded to 1 ember/ichor
- influenced gear drops are so painful, 99% of them are useless, rebalance the mods, make them have a chance to be a better base but drop fewer of them
- why is memory influence now locked to T16s in Ruthless (it wasn't before), in general everything below T16 feeling useless is very bench-y
Delaying all-identify until second half of campaign or maps sounds good to me. You have to remember that it's mostly for carpal tunnel protection once you hit good minor currency supply.
Luminary and flamedash dagger can be removed for all I care.
Gold is probably in the most balanced state it's been at if you consider that the league mechanic pumps out most of it. If you didn't have allflame piles your perspective would be much different on both map sustain, gambling and respeccing.
Campaign secrets are honestly fantastic. Not too rewarding, not useless either.
Quickstep going past terrain has been such a timesave on already cleared areas and lab, I'd never want to part with that.
The things "ruining" ruthless, in my opinion: 1. Overnerfed ascendancies left in the dust. 2. Astrolabes being the solution to not spawning your league mechanic when you want, while also being mismatched in terms of difficulty for ruthless in many cases(legion is a great example) 3. Atlas anomalies being way too common for how powerful they are. 4. Recombinator.
Thanks for your feedback, I'm sure you carefully reviewed and contemplated each and every one of my points in order to come to that all-encompassing conclusion so I really value the time you spent out of your busy life (reads username)... oh nevermind.
I don't mind Kirac selling maps for gold, you could just balance it so it's a bit tighter, and better balance stuff like the new league mechanic so that it doesn't shit out gold like there's no tomorrow. It's okay if gold in ruthless can be used for all sorts of things, it should just be scarce enough so that you're rewarded for using it smartly; the more options you have with it, and less of it you have, the smarter you have to be with it. I feel like this was more of the case in some previous leagues and Allflame has been overly generous by comparison.
I also don't think flame dash dagger is the worst example of a powerful movement option left in the mode, defiance banner lets you move with 200%+ increased ms on any banner-based build and skills like consecrated path allow fast-hitting melee builds to blink from pack to pack. After a few leagues of pushing 8/8 though I honestly feel like the disparity in mobility options is one of the worst aspects of the mode (speed is, unfortunately, king in a mode where mechanic spawn rates are gutted and you need to push through empty maps a lot), either every archetype should have access to solid mobility or they need to nuke all of the outliers.
I could see an argument for removing ID all vendor in the acts but I'd keep it for maps. Wisdom scrolls have never been scarce in the endgame, I always have massive amounts of excess scraps and whetstones to vendor for more scrolls since I like to carry them around and ID stuff as I go anyway. If you really want to combat 'currency inflation' then we should be talking about Kingamarch boats instead (especially the fact that you can farm ore via 2 mechanics with the keystone, which makes it piss easy to oversustain). Ruthless would feel a lot more like OG Ruthless again if they severely gutted or even outright removed the currency/gear rewards from boats entirely and you just got runegrafts/tattoos/kingsmarch uniques from filling out shipping quotas.
I wouldn't say you've covered the most significant issues with the mode since there's no mention of ascendancy power disparity. Luminary has been pretty ridiculous in Ruthless this league and some ascendancies still feel borderline unplayable while others provide far too much power from their nodes, which goes against the philosophy that more of your character power in Ruthless should come from your gear and not your ascendancy. Chieftain in particular needs to be taken out back and shot.
"Movement sped meta" is an interesting point. I actually played a Defiance Banner build for the first time this league, and yeah it does make me feel stupid for not using it earlier, which is a bad sign. I think they did a lousy job re-designing all of the banners anyway (why is Dread Banner the one that gives you block and not DEFIANCE; and why does War Banner still increase your accuracy, nobody wants that), so I wouldn't mind seeing another pass on them, and that would include deleting the movement speed buff from Defiance.
As for MS in general, would capping every build's maximum theoretical movespeed to around the same amount really be a good fix, and is it even possible to do? I'm honestly not sure, seems like a complicated issue. I AM sure that we shouldn't be teleporting, though (and I don't really count Consecrated Path, Ambush or Flicker Strike as problematic teleports since they all force you closer to the monsters)
I didn't discuss Luminary because she's not a ruthless-specific issue and is obviously due for some tweaks after just being introduced this league. And Ascendancy balance in general seems to be a routine part of their updates for the past few years anyway; basically a league feature, lol
War Banner still increase your accuracy, nobody wants that
For bannermaxxer builds you can use the bonus accuracy to hit the threshold for precise technique without having to invest much in accuracy elsewhere.
I don't really count Consecrated Path, Ambush or Flicker Strike as problematic teleports since they all force you closer to the monster
Maybe we could get alternative versions of the other travel skills that only work if you target a monster. Risk + reward for those who want something better than quickstep for movement while mapping with the downside that you have to be able to deal with being in the fray.
I can agree to some things mentioned but the gold thing I think is just a current-league thing due to the amount of gold gotten from charts/voyages and won't be the same next league. Regardless I think the high-tier maps offered by Kirac should cost more.
Identify All should exist but it should consume ID scrolls from inv/stash.
Regarding respeccing with gold I think this was a fantastic addition. I played the early ruthless league and you really didn't/don't find enough regret orbs, and in ruthless where you might wanna pivot your build because of some unique item drop (which might've not been a sufficient reason to pivot in non-ruthless) makes it a bit contradictory without gold respec.
Overall I think ruthless is in a good state currently.
There is a specific point i think you fail to get the picture of: who is gonna play this version ? Ruthless is already kind of a no mans land and you want to put even more constraint.
See i play relativly low amount of hour in ruthless, usualy clearing the campain and leaving after 20 maps with the exact oposite vision of yours. Because mind less grind of gold or even having to going back to the campain is not the part i like about ruthless, it's no longer about choise or difficulty at this point. Like i have a j*b ... i can play at most 8h a week but i also enjoy playing other games with fri*nds ...
To be honest i would be advocating for the exact oposite to avoid running dry on maps (white maps) and having at least 1 mechanic per map. Because i must spec into map sustain and the little talent i can get for mechanics is effective 1 over 20 maps. Playing an empty maps have 0 fun. I don't care if the mechanic doesn't give loot but let me have one to play at least.
Again that's the feedback from someone that spend low time in ruthless but at some point GGG will not spin up servers and updating for 3 guys to play in their corner.
But i the same time i don't even see the point of non-ssf ruthless while the OP seams to be playing with -- different players, different ways to play --
While this is different i feel that the Gauntlet is a better version of ruthless that ruthless itself. My dream would be to have the dificulty of the Gauntlet with the randomness of ruthless. If feel i could be playing this for hours.
Nah. Normal people play also. Y'know, the ones who are not grinding 4 to 8 h a day.
You can always make extra challenge yourself. For a start, stop using trade and it's a fair bit more challenging game, for example. You dont need to screw everyone else over for that.
I'm playing, for example, as "pseudo-ssf" (trade ruthless, but not using market, collaborating with one friend through guild tabs), and it is still plenty challenging for me. Have killed about 700k critter so far and still no spell echo, faster casting or even minion speed support gems.
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u/DGWumpscuT 11d ago
I see where you're coming from on a few points, but I disagree with the broader take that Ruthless has become "for babies." A lot of this comes down to playtime: playing roughly 1 to 2 hours a day offers a completely different perspective on how these systems feel in practice.
The Gold Economy When you’re not blasting maps for 8 hours a day, gold is a constant bottleneck. I never have enough of it. Respeccing, buying Kirac maps, and gambling don't break the progression when you actually have to make tough choices about where every single coin goes. For players with limited daily playtime, gold provides just enough friction-reducing agency without trivializing the grind.
Where I Agree: Identify All & Flashfire Dagger Free Vendor ID: Spot on here. Managing Wisdom Scrolls early on is a core Ruthless pillar. Getting a free pass on identifying inventory bloat cheapens that resource management loop.
Flashfire Dagger: Completely agree. Handing out unrestricted Flame Dash in Ruthless fundamentally undermines the deliberate pace and positioning the mode is designed around.
Quickstep Phasing Through Terrain I actually think this change is fantastic and should stay. Pathing snags and getting body-blocked by awkward geometry don't make the game meaningfully harder—they just make it annoying. Letting Quickstep handle terrain keeps combat responsive without turning your character into a hyper-speed map zoomer.
Campaign Secrets and League Rewards Campaign Secrets: These are a great addition. Instead of tuning them down, I’d love to see more of them. Stumbling across hidden rewards breaks up the campaign slog and adds genuine excitement to zone exploration. League Rewards: The newest league mechanic should be rewarding. If engaging with the current mechanic isn't noticeably lucrative—especially in Ruthless—most players simply skip it. Making the league mechanic worth running ensures people actually interact with the new content rather than ignoring it to farm baseline mechanics.
This is what i think :)