Pros and Cons of Ruthless (from #1 HC Slayer)

I hope they continue to refine it, but I maintain if you don't *like* PoE or have found better alternatives for what it ever did for you....whatever that may be...Ruthless very likely won't make a dent in your current stance. YMMV and all that.

ye I'm officially done with this mode. I am just too bored with playing the same dozen maps and rarely ever any league mechanic I enjoy, I do not progress any more whatsoever in any aspect of the game. Peak moment I was up at a few t6-7s, got a t8, that one dropped a t9 map, that one dropped a t10. that one dropped nothing. back to t5s. Cba anymore, been doing this for a week. Got to lvl84 in SSF R, now I get 1% exp per map I play and there is nothing interesting in any aspect on the horizon when I start a new map.

Summary on topic:

Pros: just about every change in mechanics are awesome in this mode. From flasks to movement skills to pantheons etc. All great, keep that stuff the way it is. I actually get excited when I see a gem drop with the word support in it, I get curious when a unique drops, that's exactly the way it should be, this is how you reclaim the joy of the genre imo.

Cons: need to find better ways to vary up the content late game, this isn't it. In plain text, I am talking the map drop gating problem I've had and league mechanics/masters/atlas missions being false sense of choice and too scarce.

One of the great things with PoE is the way we have ground through, polished, refined, modded, included, excluded and updated dozens of league mechanics into a rich and varying end game, there is just about none of that in Ruthless. 90% of the mechanics are not rewarding at all, the other 10% barely ever show up, so you just sit and do plain maps, in my case way too low level, til you get bored.

To the rest of you, hang in there, see you next time.

As someone who doesn't play Hard Core, but has loved ruthless, I fully agree with basically every point made in the OP (though the instant log out is less an issue for me of course, something I do agree shouldn't be there, for normal and HC players, think about your engagments and live or die by them, don't permit a back pedal, because particularly in competitive enviroments, it becomes a requirement).

Ruthless is a masterpiece. It needs some tunings probably but is already very playable mode where is no coming back at least for me. Playing HC. Usually been playing ssf but in this mode trading is especially interesting to me and achieving those pieces that are like unique in whole game.