It feels like there's a sentiment that in order to do Ruthless, especially solo, you have to play perfectly.  I've been using solo Ruthless Inferno as a means to practice my execution in various situations knowing that I can't rely on the bots to do hardly anything but revive me, and I finally made it through the entire mission.  I saved the last 30 minutes of it (I think it took 35-40 total) on PS5, and I figured I'd share it here, if only to demonstrate that you can make mistakes all over the place, but as long as you capitalize on some game knowledge and some tactical advancing, you can succeed.

It isn't a demonstration of skill, I'm no content creator, I'm using a controller so the camera is jerky in a way might make people feel ill, and there are several moments that are downright embarrassing (here's looking at you, trying-to-shoot-barbed-strangler-pods).  I'm an old mouse+keyboard FPS player, but recently I've convinced myself that getting better at using a controller is a thing I should do.  Plus it feels nice in melee).  Not all of us are Mr. Clean gigagamer, but we're still finding ways to succeed.

Also, some key notes that saved the day:

* Krak grenades one-shot Zoanthropes.  I was very happy to find those, otherwise I likely would have just run from the early duo.

* Guardian Relic cures Mortal Wound on use.  It saved my skin here, not sure if it's a bug, but worth knowing for now.

* Gun Strike/Ground Pound overheal, likely going to be fixed with the next patch and the contested health overhealing fix, but it served me here.

Anyway, here's the link if anyone wants to see someone fumble through a solo Ruthless and still pull through:  https://youtu.be/eTJWakW0QnU

You can do this, folks.  I believe in you all.

Play another 15 hours and you can easily complete it with any weapon on any class.​

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gr4v3dgr wrote:

It was interesting to see your ruthless run had roughly 1/3 more like 1/2 the tyranids of the two substantial runs I just did.  I noticed you already had gold gear - did your previous runs have similar numbers?

Edited to account for the final area.  Your bomb room was easily 1/3, although I'm sure a lot is RNG.  Your parry rate was really good and your timing was good in not getting tied up into a combo and missing a parry.

I absolutely got lucky in the bomb room.  I had some really terrible groups of ranged Warriors, but I'm working on dealing with those. 

And I don't keep good track of numbers, so i can't say.   I didn't show the score screen in the video but I took a screenshot (I was playing via PS Remote Play on my computer while I worked) in case you were wondering the totals: 

You can do a lot of things. Just because something is technically doable doesn't mean it's in a perfect state. The "it's fine for me" fallacy is a toxin to discussion when it comes to game design, especially when it relates to difficulty. 

At that point it stops being a discussion about mechanics and turns into a e-peen contest of accusing one another of being unskilled while yelling at others to stop all discussion. Thankfully SM2 isn't in any sort of unplayable state and experience goes a long way. Hopefully people still recognize there are plenty of systems (contested health, armor being big ones) that aren't working the way they should be.

imo its not about if its doable, its about if it feels like everything work correctly. If you find yourself rolling 10 times in a row to avoid stuff, that (to me at least) feels like mechanics arent working right. Gunstrike can overheal (and yeah, they are probably going to remove this as the devs seem to hate ppl being able heal for some reason) but can also kill you, especially if you did by mistake. Bots are also weird, they wont deal dmg to bosses. I found myself against a neurothrop boss with no bullets and had to melee it to death (which took a very long time) while watching bots shooting at it and not helping at all.

So, yes you can solo ruthless, but its not a fun experience and only oulines better the issues some of the gmae mechanics have imo

This thread isn't about the game being perfect, and it's strange to me that that would even come to mind.  It's a fresh release game, it has a lot of work it can do to get better.  That said, no games are perfect, so we choose which imperfections we can weather based on what we enjoy in the experience.  And i really enjoy the SM2 experience as a whole.  I've been very vocal about what I would like to see change in the game, but until it changes, I'm happy to play. 

The idea was to share a video that wasn't essentially a highlight reel run of someone blasting through Ruthless with hardly a scratch. It was to show that you can blunder and still succeed.  It was to address people who think they can't do Ruthless, not for people who don't want to because they don't like how it feels. 

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FatherGoose wrote:

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gr4v3dgr wrote:

It was interesting to see your ruthless run had roughly 1/3 more like 1/2 the tyranids of the two substantial runs I just did.  I noticed you already had gold gear - did your previous runs have similar numbers?

Edited to account for the final area.  Your bomb room was easily 1/3, although I'm sure a lot is RNG.  Your parry rate was really good and your timing was good in not getting tied up into a combo and missing a parry.

I absolutely got lucky in the bomb room.  I had some really terrible groups of ranged Warriors, but I'm working on dealing with those. 

And I don't keep good track of numbers, so i can't say.   I didn't show the score screen in the video but I took a screenshot (I was playing via PS Remote Play on my computer while I worked) in case you were wondering the totals: 

Okay, so not quite 1/2 but more like 65-70% of the total.  The last substantial I ran was around 1000-1100 tyranids.

Now with the patch, you can DEFINITELY solo Ruthless.  You're playing a video game now, not a sweaty punishment sim, though you still have to pay attention and play well.