That's the thing. It isn't harder, it's more tedious. You can achieve the same result, at the same level of skill, if you put in more time.

Try saying this in the Ruthless discord and you'll get chewed apart by people who have put in all this 'time' you speak of all league.

You cannot achieve the same result. Your character's potential in ruthless will always be much lower regardless of how much time you put in due to the changes made for the mode. Your DPS will always be lower. Your eHP will always be lower. You won't have movement skills. You won't have a bunch of influenced mods on your gear.

Please stop parroting this take that you heard from some streamer or redditor. Try to listen to people who have played the mode all league instead of people who don't even know the ruleset for it.