Hey Kozmik, only a quick response for now but I promise to have more for you soon… may not be till this coming week, I have a busy IRL weekend ahead, so don’t think I have forgotten about you if I am silent a few days.
I’m not sure if you saw my post about S27 for Barbs in general… Season 27 notes for Barbs
I already had the details on the shockwave via Rob’s video, but thank you for passing them along again. I wish I had stuck around on his stream a bit longer, I could have saved him a good bit of time on that Bloodshed testing- the discount on damage due to proc coefficient is something I’ve known about for a long time. This is why I basically forbid people to use Bloodshed with Leapquake (EQ has 5% proc coeff).
Anyway, my quick gut-check response to your overall question is that I think Zei is going to give the fastest clear in an ideal situation, but that Pain Enhancer might give better results in an average rift. I’ll give that some further thought, but the “math” explanation for why I think that is already percolating in my brain (warning: may be rather long, when it arrives).
Related to your question about Ruthless, you may want to check out this study I did a while back on the effect of Ruthless (also Ambush) on the kill speed vs a group of mobs (the type I looked at here was Lacuni/Phasebeast):
I’ll get back to you with more as soon as I can, thanks for reaching out.