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Elon Musk is back in the limelight with his Diablo 4 accolades yet again. This time, he's taking the spot of the #1 claimant on the Hardcore ladder. Digging into the Pit Leaderboards maintained in Helltides (filter it by "hardcore" when you get there) will show that Musk's character, KekSoftmax, has indeed made it to the summit.
But there are a few strings attached to this claim, and Grok, the cutting-edge chatbot that's part of Elon Musk-owned social media platform, acknowledges these.
So, is Elon Musk rank 1 in Diablo 4 hardcore?
The answer is no. Firstly, we must acknowledge the absence of any current official Diablo 4 Hardcore leaderboard whatsoever. The last time we had one was in Season 5 (Season of the Infernal Hordes), which ended back in October 2024. Since then, there has been no official ladder showcased in-game, as there are no Blizzard-designated Trial dungeons to stress-test your build in.
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The #1 status that Elon Musk can lay a legitimate claim to is on an unofficial leaderboard on Helltides.com. This is a crowdsourced community ladder that gauges Tier 100+ Pit runs.
These are not tracked through any official game API. Instead, the only ranked entries are runs that were submitted to the Helltide Discord. Naturally, it's far from a representation of the whole player base.
When Twitteratti asked Grok about the legitimacy of the #1 Hardcore player claim, Grok found it "inaccurate". A point of note is that the current Helltides Pit leaderboard does indeed rank the tech billionaire as #1 on the Hardcore ladder, a detail that the bot missed.
Interestingly enough, in another post, Grok dismissed Elon Musk's claims by bringing up Path of Exile 2. While Musk has previously displayed some degree of familiarity with his Pit 150+ clears, his Path of Exile 2 streams feign success on boosted accounts.
Grok highlights how Elon was caught "paying pros to grind for him", insinuating that the same may have happened with KekSoftMax, Musk's character in the current Diablo 4 Season.
In the 14-minute video Elon Musk posted earlier today (June 16, 2025) to showcase a Tier 115 Pit run, he is seen using some variation of a meta Spiritborn build with a Vortex-Crushing Hand combo.
The full build is not shown on the Helltides.com submission, nor is his gear revealed. But as we can identify from the video, Musk is using at least one Mythic Unique (Ring of Starless Skies), a gigantic amount of Runes, and fully masterworked gear.
In other words, a lot of time (or money) has been invested in KekSoftMax. This shows that even on an unofficial community-run site, being #1 Hardcore player is neither easy nor cheap.
Stay on Sportskeeda for more Diablo 4 news and updates.
