Raids have been always difficult day one. Even the day one A-Teams were always under leveled. All contest does is set a cap for everyone's grinding to ensure that there is a level field and streamers don't grind way higher than everyone else for an adavantage. Remember how bad it was with people deleting characters in Vanila D2 to get higher power gear for the raid? Contest's job is to make the raid about skill. This is in fact, the first raid where it wasnt needed as much, but was still a fallback for those who had bad luck on pinnacle RNG. I wasnt able to make it past templar with my team, and while dissapinted, I was happy with my progress. In summary, contest is there to help make raid races more about skill than grinding ahead of time, and is important in today's Raid Racing atmosphere. Tl;Dr: Contest mode exists to even the playing field for everyone, ensuring that raid racing is about skill and not power level.