Wudijo's Hardcore Season 28 Event: "Blood of the Willing"

General Discussion
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Hi everybody, I just wanted to make sure that people here on the forum were aware of an event that is going on in connection with the start of Season 28.

Wudijo is running a competition called “Blood of the Willing”. It takes place for the first 9 days of the season, so starting later today, and running until the end of next weekend (Sunday March 5th).

This competition is Hardcore-only.

The contest has a bunch of different challenges to compete in. Mainly, this involves clearing as high a GR as possible with 3 different sets for a class (and if possible to do this for multiple classes). But, there are also a bunch of general challenges, like being the first to assemble a full set of Primal Blackthorne’s, or to get the highest, fastest clear using a Shi Mizu setup. And, there are also a handful of class-specific challenges, like clearing as high as possible using a Barb with no weapons equipped, or a Raiment Monk with 4 generators on the bar.

You get varying numbers of points for completing different challenges.

There are prizes (in the form of Battle.net currency codes) for the winners of the tournament, mostly sponsored by Blizzard, but also in part by Wudi himself.

A full overview of the event, including all of the rules and the different challenges, can be found in this spreadsheet:

And Wudi has a video talking about it, here:

Of course, if anybody is going to participate and needs advice on any Barb-related components of this event, come ask questions over on the Barb forum.

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I’m looking forward to dying to T16 Malthael at the end of a no cheat death Speed Racer run! :joy:

What GR tier do you think a weaponless barb can clear? You’ll have something like 700 flat damage (pretty sure ancient damage range on amulet is the optimal play, so 3x jewelry rolls + 200 base damage from altar), but then base 1 APS and only one weapon power.

Are there any barb damage skills that actually require a weapon (e.g. like certain DH skills that require a bow, or Magic Weapon on wizard that requires a weapon)?

Will WWRend win? Most important thing is Ambo’s.
Or MoTE, don’t lose any critical weapon powers there either.

I feel like Remorseless + attack speed is too big of a loss for HoTA.
Frenzy loses Oathkeeper (edit: actually, which is better, Bastion’s or Oathkeeper?) + attack speed, also seems pretty significant.
Raekor’s loses 300th Spear, but I don’t know how much of a lead it has over the other sets, does it have enough of a lead to stay in front without the extra weapon multiplier?

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What is a “wudijo?”

/unnecessarycharacters

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I did 110 with no weapons using Raekor, in non-season. Just took 1 key, not a perfect rift, finished with plenty of time left. I obviously had a lot more paragon here than somebody would in season, but the altar adds a ton of power.

Just picking up that extra 200 damage takes you from a flat average of 472.5 (2 rings plus amulet) to 672.5, which is a 42% increase, or a bit more than 2 tiers.

As for which build will take the crown: that is the $1000 question. You’re right that Rend and Leapquake don’t lose any of their most important powers. And I think you’re right too that Frenzy and the HotAs are non-starters: too much damage lost. Raekor loses either 300th Spear or Arreat’s, either of which costs you at least 3x damage, which is 7 tiers worth.

That would make you think that maybe it would be Wastes/Rend, since it is only 3-4 tiers behind Raekor. But: Rend actually loses a ton of damage from lost attack speed. You’ll stack Rend fine via WW, but when it comes to hard-casting in order to proc AD, which you will absolutely need to do, you are going to be at only 1.1 sheet APS, unless you add AS on other gear, which of course will cost you other damage rolls. That means you can’t get the double stack Rend from Lamentation most of the time, so this will probably end up costing you an extra ~3 tiers of damage. So, Raekor vs Wastes will probably be pretty close.

As for Leapquake, you are just losing Furnace. And, AS is almost irrelevant for this build, so here we suffer the smallest penalty. But, it’s a weaker build, about 8 tiers behind Raekor. So even without 300th or Arreat’s, Raekor probably has a small lead over MotE.

It’ll be close, though: gonna be interesting to see!

As far as final tier goes… well, I estimated +15-20 tiers of power from the Altar. Falling from my nearly 5k paragon to 1k for the event basically cuts your damage in half, so let’s call it -5 tiers. And, I could certainly do at least 115 in non-season with Raekor. 115 - 5 + 15 = 125, so I would expect to see a clear of no less than 125, and I would not be surprised at 135 or even higher.

Edit:

Did 110 with Leapquake, no weapons.

Also felt pretty good, and again had an imperfect rift, but plenty of time left. And, just one key. Note that here I am using a somewhat unconventional CoE + Aughild setup, mostly because I just don’t have good F+R rings with Damage Range rolls. But, since we cannot use Furnace with this setup, Aughild + CoE may well be the optimal choice anyway, since we don’t need to figure Furnace and Aughild being additive with one another.

It’s really hard to say whether this or Raekor would be better. This certainly feels more natural to play.

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The forums would make you think he is an evil dev that is chief of the fun police. In actuality he is a cool knowledgeable guy who puts out lots of useful videos and guides.

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Great, even if it was interesting, it serves the PC audience only.

Hard pass. Besides, I don’t need some streamer to tell me how to challenge myself.

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Ok, so it’s a streamer.

I don’t have a personal problem with streamers, I just find it weird that if anyone else says the same thing first, it’s not held in regard but if you have a webcam, suddenly, it’s brilliance.

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