​Best PoE Ruthless Builds - Top 5 Path of Exile 3.20 Builds for Ruthless Hard Mode

In this guide, we go over the Top 5 POE 3.20 Ruthless Builds that should help you to get through to high-tier content relatively easily. We've prepared these with some criteria that we think are important for Forbidden Sanctum league and Hard mode mechanics, so hope it helps a bit as well. Now let's get started!

Best PoE Ruthless Builds - Top 5 Path of Exile 3.20 Builds for Ruthless Hard Mode

New Ruthless is a separate character creation tag that significantly increases the difficulty and changes the playstyle of the game with extreme item scarcity and other changes.  These are the Top 5 Best Ruthless Builds that we are considering for the Path of Exile 3.20 Hard Mode, which one's the best we'll let you decide for yourself, or who knows it might not be any of the three on the list, but if the answer for you isn't any of you above hopefully you'll learn something and you'll be better informed in terms of picking a build that is right for you.

Related Read:

Best POE 3.20 Builds - Top 10 Cheap Forbidden Sanctum Builds in Path of Exile 3.20 League

Top 10 POE Best Ruthless Builds for Ruthless with Gold Event

1 - Cold Dot Occultist

Hardcore: 9/10

Clear Speed: 6/10

Survivability: 9/10

Wrist Friendly: 7/10

Single Target: 8/10

Optimaiztion Cost: 9/10

Reliance on Uniques: 8/10

Gear Flexibility: 6/10

Solo Self-Found: 9/10

Occultist is by far probably the most overpowered build for Ruthless now, the reason behind that is that support gems in this game mode are supposed to be scarce and valuable, which means whenever you do a skill point quest, you don't actually get your support gem now, the only way to actually get a gem deterministically is you finish the library Quest and you get this token to call uncarved gemstone that you can turn in for any Active Skill Gem in the game. Ended up playing cold dot, which receives all of its necessary skills from quests. Cold Dot shines because it requires no gem links and gear! So if you notice this there are no support gems that you can buy and their only active skill gems but this means that you were able to buy Vortex for the vendor and for cold thought on which you actually get every single gem, you need for the quest reward and this is actually just absolutely huge now.

2 - Poison Blade Vortex

Hardcore: 8/10

Clear Speed: 8 /10

Survivability: 9/10

Wrist Friendly: 7/10

Single Target: 9/10

Optimaiztion Cost: 9/10

Reliance on Uniques: 3/10

Gear Flexibility: 7/10

Solo Self-Found: 8/10

Poison seems to be strong in this league with the bug on poison duration being fixed as well, there are better poison builds out there like including poisonous concoction. Poison Blade Vortex is an excellent mapper for Blight Expedition, Abyss, or anything else with confined spaces, crowded packs, or creatures. If you pour some money into it, it might even be a nice buzzer, but you shouldn't expect it to murder the Uber executives. Blade Vortex was extremely broken in the past, which is why it had been getting more and more popular lately. It has reached a standstill where it can still be classified as one of the most popular builds while no longer being an entirely broken design. The combination of extremely high survivability on an ascendancy that provides a lot of QoL in its movement speed, really good clear speed, and powerful conditional effects explains why. The construct has received both buffs and nerfs; for instance, we lost some malediction, but despair now has many more enhanced temporal chains and is feeble as well. Overall, we believe that the 3.20 patch significantly improved the build.

3 - Wintertide Brand Occultist (Cold Dot)

Hardcore: 8/10

Clear Speed: 8/10

Survivability: 8/10

Wrist Friendly: 9/10

Single Target: 7/10

Optimaiztion Cost: 9/10

Reliance on Uniques: 8/10

Gear Flexibility: 9/10

Solo Self-Found: 9/10

First is Wintertide Brand Occultist or any cold dot, for that matter which includes Vortex, Cold Snap, Creeping Frost, etc. This build is our go-to build whenever we can't think of any good League starters and we don't have much time left and this build hasn't failed us once. It does a decent amount of damage has a decent amount of defense and it also has very good gear progression from which a lot of newbies can learn. This build doesn't rely on any uniques at all that's why it's a very good League starter, although you can invest a bit later to go either low life or CI. The play style is also very safe as it's a brand build where you cast your brands to enemies and run around while your brand does the job it also slows down so much that it feels like you're playing in slow motion sometimes allowing you to see and Dodge attacks from mobs which are quite rare for Path of Exile. If you feel like you are lacking damage with winner-type brand, you can always switch over to Vortex without much respect and go from there. In terms of leveling, you just use freezing pulse until Level 12 where you get your winner-type brand, and off you go. It's going to be an absolute cruise until you hit and game bosses like Cyrus and Maven just make sure to rush to Brand Mastery to get Brands attached to a new enemy each time they activate to allow your Brands to clear better.

2 - Spectral Shield Throw Trickster

Hardcore: 7/10

Clear Speed: 8/10

Survivability: 9/10

Wrist Friendly: 7/10

Single Target: 8/10

Optimaiztion Cost: 9/10

Reliance on Uniques: 3/10

Gear Flexibility: 7/10

Solo Self-Found: 3/10

This build is just so strong in terms of damage where we can reach up to more than 10 million DPS without too much investment, and Emperor's vigilance with trickster ascendancy makes this build so tanky allowing us to cap spell suppression blockchains along with high evasion rating as well. In terms of clarity, it's just so satisfying as you will shatter packs of mobs and freeze map bosses most of the time. It also relies on very cheap uniques like the princess saber from sorrow Empress vigilance and seething Fury, so most of the currency that you will need to spend is probably the cluster jewels and maybe the awakened gems.

In terms of leveling, we suggest you level with shield crush, it should be quite easy as the skill itself is pretty strong and you can switch over to Shield throw once you get it at level 28. If you feel like your single Target damage is lacking, you can also use another 4 links with Shield crash for a single Target during the campaign. You can also try this build as other ascendancies like Raider, Deadeye, or Berserker if you want to.

5 - Venom Gyre Deadeye

Clear Speed: 9 /10

Survivability: 8/10

Wrist Friendly: 7/10

Single Target: 9/10

Optimaiztion Cost: 7/10

Reliance on Uniques: 3/10

Gear Flexibility: 9/10

Solo Self-Found: 8/10

Hardcore: 6/10

Venom Gyre Deadeye is still a perfect league starter (SSF-Viable) in Path of Exile 3.20 for people who put a premium on fast mapping and infinite scalability. With great clear speed during mapping, solid single target damage against harder encounters, and decent defensive layers, this is an exceptional all-around build for finishing all 4 Voidtones with a comfortable playstyle. If Venom Gyre Deadeye is even half as flawed as Vaal Lightning Strike, it might change the course of the game. It has been one of the greatest mappers in Path of Exile for a very long time because of the massive amount of Chaining Projectiles and the capability to do damage while moving. It is undoubtedly an excellent league mechanic because Whirling Blades can deal damage. Though with the Elusive and Nigtbalde nerfed, Venom Gyre Deadeye did receive roughly a 25% damage nerf compared to 3.19, we still think it has enough damage clear all content smoothly.