Ruthless made me love the PoE leveling experience again

This takes me back to the old days of being bad at the Path of Exile meta (I still am bad, just not THAT bad), almost never trading, making my own builds, and adapting to things that dropped for me. Except now having to adapt is the #1 thing, although you can trade for things, we increasingly need to rely on things that are always available like the skill tree in order to progress. So while people used to thumb their noses are resists on the tree, they are now attractive from a progression perspective. Builds that can effectively use a wider variety of equipment also shine in Ruthless. For instance, Inquisitor taking Battlemage can significantly boost their effective damage even with a weapon we would normally consider jank on a mixed damage skill like Wave of Conviction with 330% scaling using physical to fire damage conversion on the tree. Once I ascended I started melting enemies on 1-link with terrible gear even with a dumpster tier weapon.

Right now my goal is just to the beat the base game, which for me is challenging and rewarding enough. I'm not even thinking about endgame bossing and maps, but if I get to that great. Otherwise the leveling experience on Ruthless is simply AMAZING, and has made me love Path of Exile again. Loot feels impactful and rewarding again, especially support gems! I don't care for the league mechanic, but it doesn't even matter. I haven't felt this way about the game since Ascendency. I couldn't have been more wrong about the recent changes to this game, for me it feels like its in the best place its been since Ascendency.

100%. Most fun I've had in POE in forever. My first toon died to innocence, which normally would be a bit of a let down, but in ruthless, the entire time playing leading up to that was enjoyable (and the fight itself really felt epic), so yeah, I'm already looking forward to throwing my next toon into the fray :)

Yes !
Ruthless mode is great, you don't have to wait and get bored to reach the endgame, it's already here at the beginning ! Everytime you get a yellow item it's Christmas
RIP lvl 54 but it was intense.