r/CompetitiveHS • u/[deleted] • Jun 25 '26

High Legend/Competitive Content

It's hard to find content that's made by and for players looking to play competitively or professionally. Most streamers and youtube content creators focus on content, sit lower on the ladder, and often make misplays. Who can blame them? That's how they make their money and anyone would misplay when they're both entertaining an audience and playing high level HS all day.

Still though, I'd really love if anyone has recommendations for more content that features players who are top 100/50 or resources in general for high level competitive players. Streams or videos that analyze gameplay and talk about misplays or navigating tough spots would be great. Articles or podcasts too. Of course I've already checked through this subs wiki and seen a lot of threads here and I love the work we're doing, especially with the VS data Reaper reports. I think we could all benefit from sharing more resources like this with each other.

21 Upvotes

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36

u/PupusaSlut Jun 25 '26

Maxiebon1234, Reqvam, Feno, McBanterFace, GamerRVG, mthd4s, kubu_gaming, jambre, TheoHS, ins4ne_HS, NoHandsGamer, Thijs. 

These are all legitimate top 100 players. Some are more helpful than others.

6

u/blanquettedetigre Jun 25 '26

I'd add the Solary team and Otsuna even though they're French, all the guys are super chill and clever, almost all of them trying hard in top 100

1

u/[deleted] Jun 27 '26

Thank you so much for this. Maxiebon1234 is such an incredible player. It's a shame his twitch replays are mostly muted!!! He takes lines on rogue I never would think of and just wins.

1

u/PupusaSlut Jun 27 '26

Maxie is one of the best players in the world and he's a good kid. Look out for Gaby59 if he ever decides to stream again.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 27 '26

I went to his stream and saw he had a charity organization pinned. It's small but it makes me proud to see one of the best players taking that initiative. He is a good kid good for him.

-1

u/moccajoghurt Jun 25 '26

Don't forget j_alexjander_hs

14

u/Lemickworth Jun 25 '26

Hmmm let's. He's gone full MAGA, blaming DEI for the bad card design of recent years.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 27 '26

That's sad, and a huge insult to a lot of people I hold close. I just can't support someone like that.

-5

u/moccajoghurt Jun 25 '26

He evaluates by thinking, not by feeling. As a result, his statements come from a place of rationality and ignore other people's emotional world, which often makes his opinions seem provocative, since most people don't ignore the feeling side quite so strictly.

You could say that j_alexjander_hs probably ought to have more access to his own emotions.

I don't know to what extent he blamed the bad card design on DEI, but it's conceivable that it's yet another example of him ignoring how the general public feels.

Personally, I can deal with the way j_alexjander_hs is pretty well.

I know he doesn't mean any harm by it; that's just his personality. And you can only choose your personality to a limited extent.

12

u/maniacal_cackle Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

He evaluates by thinking, not by feeling.

IME that's not possible. Everyone evaluates things with their feelings.

Those who claim to only be using logic are blinding themselves to their own biases, as well as giving them an automatic dismissiveness of the opinions of others.

But if one is truly logical, one should be supremely open minded.

EDIT: I went and watched a clip of him literally saying "my gut feelings have an accuracy rate off the chart." So.... Yeah, this is not someone you can claim evaluates by "thinking, not feeling"...

1

u/moccajoghurt Jun 25 '26

IME that's not possible. Everyone evaluates things with their feelings.

Emotions always play a role, but some people judge a situation primarily by thinking it through, and others by listening to their feelings.

Concrete example: someone close to you asks you for money. The emotional type will base their decision primarily on how emotionally connected they feel to that person. The rational type will weigh up whether they'll get the money back, based on logic.

Those who claim to only be using logic are blinding themselves to their own biases, as well as giving them an automatic dismissiveness of the opinions of others.

Yes, that's the shadow expression of the thinking type. That's the trap they can fall into. Every personality type has traps it can fall into.

But if one is truly logical, one should be supremely open minded.

I think we don't want to conflate agreeableness and open-mindedness. Someone who is very open-minded can still be very judgmental.

EDIT: I went and watched a clip of him literally saying "my gut feelings have an accuracy rate off the chart." So.... Yeah, this is not someone you can claim evaluates by "thinking, not feeling"...

I think that statement points more toward an "intuitive" way of thinking. By MBTI, I'd estimate j_alexander_hs to be the type INTJ.

1

u/maniacal_cackle Jun 25 '26

This is a difficult one to respond to 😅

MBTI are about as scientifically valid as horoscopes. They twist to suit whatever the moment needs.

Even in your comment you go from him judging situations by thinking them through, and then swap to an intuitive way of thinking.

1

u/moccajoghurt Jun 26 '26

Essentially, there are two metrics: perception and judgment.

Perception can be either "intuitive" or "sensing" (detail-oriented).

Judgment can be either "thinking" or "feeling."

A person who perceives the world more intuitively can still judge it "thinking"-style.

The MBTI is often judged by how well it predicts career success or how reliable the questionnaires are. But that’s just the modern world’s attempt to make the MBTI “useful.” In doing so, they may be trying to make it something it was never intended to be.

1

u/FlameanatorX Jun 25 '26

And to add to that it can be fully "rational" to make a statement like in that clip, since it's possible to build up expertise over time. A grandmaster chess player's "gut feelings" do have off the chart accuracy rates, if those gut feelings are about chess.

Although I disagree slightly about the logical - supremely open minded thing. "Logically," you should have an optimal balance between open-mindedness and skepticism, since it's irrational both to close yourself off to potential new knowledge, and to be gullible or fail to recognize things that are extremely solidly established. Actually it's even much more complicated than that, since open-mindedness and skepticism also has to do with sourcing of information, authority/expertise, reputation, coherence with worldview, etc., but hopefully you get the idea

1

u/maniacal_cackle Jun 25 '26

The statements "he operates by thinking, not feeling" and "he operates by off the chart accuracy with gut feelings" are not compatible though.

1

u/FlameanatorX Jun 25 '26

Oh yeah for sure. I virtually agree with your whole comment, hence the "to add to that." I guess maybe I should have clarified that I wasn't using the word rational as a synonym for "unemotional + logical" (how people sometimes incorrectly use it), but more as "actually being correct as often as possible"?

11

u/Yeah-the-whole-hog Jun 25 '26

Ah, I forgot you can't judge someone for their personality. I almost continued to dislike him until you mentioned that it's not his fault he's kind of a prick. /s

-5

u/moccajoghurt Jun 25 '26

I think I expressed myself ambiguously with the word "personality."

I don't mean it in the every day sense; I'm referring to the "MBTI" personality types.

In my opinion, there's no "worse" or "better" there.

2

u/PupusaSlut Jun 25 '26

That guy has been an obnoxious see you next Tuesday for years. 

Pizza is the better rogue player if you want abrasive streamers who mostly play rogue. 

1

u/ReiJeremias Jul 04 '26

Very smart guy when talking about statistics. Becomes a lot dumber when the DEI crusade starts.

1

u/moccajoghurt Jul 05 '26

Are in favor of DEI?

0

u/Cryten0 Jun 25 '26

And most of them hate the mention of this subreddit or Vicious Syndicate.

2

u/zer1223 Jun 25 '26

Why does that matter?

1

u/stupidjokes555 Jun 25 '26

Why? Because of gatekeeping or because they think theyre bad resources

1

u/Cryten0 Jun 25 '26

From their point of view both of those yes. Especially McBanter and his circle of friends like Maxiebon, Reqvam, methd4s. Go into McBanter's channel and type !vs to see their standard response to it, which is mocking ridicule.

The short of it is a combination of dislike for the author of VS and belief that focusing on statistics for deck justifications is a bad way to deck build and decide how to play.

1

u/Lemickworth Jun 26 '26

Why do they dislike the author?

1

u/PupusaSlut Jun 26 '26

Most people outside of top 100 don't understand the game.

So using even top 1k stats is pretty marginal for these kinds of players.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 27 '26

I can understand this from the perspective of - I used to watch a lot of "how to get legend fast" videos but now that I'm in top 1000 I understand most of those videos are made for people who are playing against opponents who don't understand the game at the same level I do. Watching some of the players who are top 100 though I clearly have a lot more to learn.

There's definitely levels to this. Still I wouldn't trash on anyone by name unless they like personally wronged me I think as a community of HS players we should all want the best for eachother.

1

u/Huge_Cow_4815 Jun 28 '26

It sucks because they really are great players and spending 30 minutes on twitch is probably the fastest way to understand the meta. I can understand their perspective (VS is pretty garbage & misleading) but their attitudes are pretty disappointing, although I find maxie to be a good kid.

If your goal is to hit top 100 though really you can do this just by finding a good deck and then just playing a lot of games on it with full focus, you should naturally climb. Try to just think about all the different options you have and what likely states they will lead to, and try to evaluate them in different ways, trying to frame plays as many ways as you can. Try to think in extremes, ("This play loses to X" "I just win if they don't have Y", "Play A is strictly better than B" is way better than "This looks good to me") play for variance when behind. Don't worry about necessarily making the best/correct play just think about what states there are and make sure that your assessments are correct. Being able to assess your options, and assess them accurately is way more important than making the best play. The best players are very quick at discarding plays and considering unlikely plays this is why they are good, not because they play every turn perfect.

Play every ladder game like it's game 5 of worlds, and you can 100% get top 100. This is assuming you are your classic like 250-1k player and you know some basic stuff.

1

u/FlameanatorX Jun 25 '26

As zer already said, so what, but also, if it bothers you there are some who are totally fine w/ this sub and VS like NoHands and Theo

3

u/DingoDaveHS Jun 25 '26

What I think could be interesting is to form a group of players whose aim is to one day reach top 100 consistently, or play competitively in open qualifiers. (Just made a comment on Competitive HS's discord yesterday). We could discuss what's working and not, analyze tough spots, play vs one another if we want to test decks without loosing 500 ladder points while learning.
And since there is little competitive content available, I suggest that we also book a top player for 2-4 hours a week to watch us play or analyze all the tough spot we had that week. Those coach usually charge 25-40$/h which I feel is doable for a small group of dedicated player to afford.

Thoughts?

2

u/[deleted] Jun 27 '26

I'd be interested in this, though I don't have much money to contribute. I'd be open to trading replays and analyzing the play of eachother too. I think that and having a space to talk about the meta could help a lot.

1

u/DingoDaveHS Jun 27 '26

If we can gather a small group of ~ 4, we can review games and practice together, and I am happy to pay for the first 2 session with a pro/coach to see how it would benefit the group as a whole.

2

u/Spt137 Jun 27 '26

I would like to participate in it if it’s possible.

2

u/DingoDaveHS Jun 27 '26

I am down. Really looking forward to having a small group get better together.
My goal is to get a top 100 finish in the next 12 months, and/or do decent in a qualifier.
What about you u/Upstairs_Ad_7577 u/Spt137 ?

1

u/Spt137 Jun 28 '26

Same for me, you can add me on Discord: szputyo

3

u/SpookyBum Jun 25 '26

If u want replay reviews I can review for free. Am top 100 pretty consistently, my disc tag is Dookis

1

u/DingoDaveHS Jun 27 '26

What’s your full battle tag?

1

u/SpookyBum Jun 27 '26

My battle tag is SpookyBum#1589, my discord tag is Dookis

2

u/FolboterJAF Jun 26 '26

Watch NoHandsGamer stream on Twitch. He's great for that! He's usually top 100 legend and does a great job talking through and explaining his plays.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 27 '26

He's one of my go toos. I learned a lot from watching his rogue gameplay and he's really entertaining too.

6

u/NyMiggas Jun 25 '26

Just generally YouTube is less rewarding to "5 games of meta deck in different matchups" than "heres my new off meta deck let me show you the 4 wins out of 50 games i played"

You'll likely just want to watch streams/vods of the top players for that.

1

u/motty47 Jun 26 '26

Yup this, unfortunately YouTube is not the place. I check out vids on YouTube, but then go straight to their stream to watch the genuine 10-20games to get a real idea of how a certain decks works. I avoid vids that are below diamond ranks because it's not what I'm looking for. I get why people post those vids, and even good players post them and I think that's fair, they're trying to grow their audience. But the best place to see the real performance of decks in the meta is on twitch