Will ruthless help balance the game?

From what I see popular streamers do, ruthless might as well have been named bane/contagion/vortex mode.

Seriously when are those skills going to be evened with the rest of the lot? It's literally all I see on ruthless streams.

No matter what people think, I don't think Ruthless will have much effect on the core game, neither positive or negative. The hope, of course - as you mention, is that Ruthless will indirectly highlight some balance issues, but I doubt it. And I don't think any of the skills you mention are in need of a nerf. But A LOT of skills are in desperate need of buffs.

No, they're most definitely going to nerf a lot of league starter builds because of Ruthless and make the game more of a slog, and in ways that will hurt the builds that are already not being used in Ruthless as well.

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lolerman wrote:

From what I see popular streamers do, ruthless might as well have been named bane/contagion/vortex mode.

Seriously when are those skills going to be evened with the rest of the lot? It's literally all I see on ruthless streams.

Every league we have "league starters" that let us progress faster. It doesn't mean that this skills better overall.

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Alendert wrote:

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lolerman wrote:

From what I see popular streamers do, ruthless might as well have been named bane/contagion/vortex mode.

Seriously when are those skills going to be evened with the rest of the lot? It's literally all I see on ruthless streams.

Every league we have "league starters" that let us progress faster. It doesn't mean that this skills better overall.

Skills that can easily carry you through the whole game till mid maps on a supposed 'hard mode' that do not rely on gear/support gems are not just 'league starters'. They are clearly imbalanced. I'd be fine if they were supperior for a couple of acts till you get your other 'main' skills, but that's not the case. If their very late game is ok, then their early stages damage should be tweaked.

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lolerman wrote:

Skills that can easily carry you through the whole game till mid maps on a supposed 'hard mode' that do not rely on gear/support gems are not just 'league starters'. They are clearly imbalanced. I'd be fine if they were supperior for a couple of acts till you get your other 'main' skills, but that's not the case. If their very late game is ok, then their early stages damage should be tweaked.

You don't get it. If 2 skill games have same power in early but one super good in late, everyone will use this late game gem. But if one gem will be stronger early and another will be stronger late players will probably use both of them, one for early game another for late game.

You can't 'balance' Path of Exile. It's far too complicated for that. At best it achieves moments of relative stability...And this is entirely by design: GGG wanted a volatile metagame to keep players on their toes and engaged, which is the antithesis to true balance. If they wanted balance, they'd have made a mechanically simpler game.

Momentum and inertia do have a balance of their own -- like how it's easier to balance a bike going fast than it is one going slow (gyroscopic effect, among other things). But it's an illusion of safety because even a slight change when you're barrelling down a hill can send you flying to your doom, whereas falling off a slow, wobbly bike, while far more likely, is far less dangerous.

All Ruthless does is delay that balance by reducing the bike's acceleration. It'll still get there after a lot more slow wobble and the state of 'balance' will return. Maybe a better word here would be equilibrium rather than balance.

So as long as you remember that it is not actually GGG's intention to 'balance' the game, you'll know that questions such as the OP's are, while well-intentioned, sort of missing the point. It is in GGG's best interest to introduce new and interesting imbalances, not waste time chasing an elusive and ultimately terminal state of true balance.

Its new, novelty, once that is gone people will play poe and poe2 and diablo4

No.

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skjutengris wrote:

Its new, novelty, once that is gone people will play poe and poe2 and diablo4

Interestingly enough, even amongst alpha testers who care to comment about it, there is a reasonable amount of hype to play the Retail league as normal, get challenges (challenges 40/40 not available in Ruthless), then 'relax' to the slower more permanent mode that they forsee themselves playing in its version of standard post 3.20.

Edit: which is to say that they aren't just about 'hype' - if they were they'd probably be 'hyped' to play it on league start ASAP. And some are of course. But I'm seeing signs that people genuinely like the mode for what it is and what it can be, not just novelty.