I really don't really notice a huge difference when I play "Pro" players compared to other Legend players. In fact, some "Pro" players that I've come across on ladder make more misplays than other Legend players (who don't have the time or money to constantly grind ladder and/or paying thousands of their own dollars to travel to all these events).
Really the major difference between "Pros" and other Legend players is that the same group of "Pros" are the ones constantly traveling to events (some of them have teams that sponsor them I get that) while Legend players like myself don't want to pay the travel costs or have the time to constantly attend all these events... and also actually have a job in real life. Hotform ("Pro" Player who is less active in Hearthstone now but got 2nd at the World Championship a few years back) actually was talking about the same thing a couple months ago on his stream... saying if you just spam travel to all these events you're bound to rack up a lot of HCT Points.
Really the major difference between "Pros" and other Legend players is that the same group of "Pros" are the ones constantly traveling to events (some of them have teams that sponsor them I get that) while Legend players like myself don't want to pay the travel costs or have the time to constantly attend all these events... and also actually have a job in real life.
I follow hearthstone tournaments pretty well, and if this theory were to be true I think we'd see a lot more random players finishing high. At every event there's a good amount of "no-names" attending, and some events have had over 100 participants iirc.
It might be an added factor of building a lineup that the pros have much more experience with, I'm not denying the strong presence of RNG.
Every month legend is achieved by tens of thousands of players. One has to be intoxicated or insane to suggest that all of these players play exactly as well as one another.
Every month legend is achieved by tens of thousands of players. One has to be intoxicated or insane to suggest that all of these players play exactly as well as one another.
I think that most of the players that reach (high) legend regularly could become professionals if they had enough time or guidance from more experienced players. Like you said many people have work or school as a top priority in their life so they do not dedicate that much time in hearthstone even though they may get to legend every month. I guess it all comes down to what you want to do in life and how much you try to get there.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"I will tell you what Velen never taught me.Whosoever stands before the light...inevitably casts a shadow."
Every month legend is achieved by tens of thousands of players. One has to be intoxicated or insane to suggest that all of these players play exactly as well as one another.
This thread is nothing more than a sick brag.
You have reading comprehension issues.
Maybe you should read your own entry post, because he did understand your point. And he is right about it, your connotation is that playing in tournaments requires nothing but money & RNG instead of skill.
It depends what the OP means by "major difference."
There isn't a "HS skill" that HS players possess, but non-players lack. Doing well at the game is a function of general and applied intelligence - anyone who is as clever as a typical HS pro, and who has the experience to understand specific match-ups as well as a typical HS pro, can be expected to perform as well as a typical HS pro.
However, I suspect the OP is trivializing the first part of that equation. Most HS pros are very clever people, and most Legend players aren't very clever people - there aren't many C-students at Legend, but there are plenty of Bs. It seems overly optimistic to claim that the main difference between a typical HS pro, and a typical Legend ladder grinder is the amount of time they each spend playing the game, or "spamming travel" to tournaments, as the OP appears to suggest.
I really don't really notice a huge difference when I play "Pro" players compared to other Legend players. In fact, some "Pro" players that I've come across on ladder make more misplays than other Legend players (who don't have the time or money to constantly grind ladder and/or paying thousands of their own dollars to travel to all these events).
Really the major difference between "Pros" and other Legend players is that the same group of "Pros" are the ones constantly traveling to events (some of them have teams that sponsor them I get that) while Legend players like myself don't want to pay the travel costs or have the time to constantly attend all these events... and also actually have a job in real life. Hotform ("Pro" Player who is less active in Hearthstone now but got 2nd at the World Championship a few years back) actually was talking about the same thing a couple months ago on his stream... saying if you just spam travel to all these events you're bound to rack up a lot of HCT Points.
The Legend rank is pretty much the start of the competitive scene. The act of reaching it already weeds out 99.5% of the population (no that's NOT a made up number. The couple of thousand of people who make up the NA ladder is only about .5% of the actual NA playerbase. For the record, the number of people who regular go on forums like this one typically make up 1% of a game's playerbase. We tend to REALLLY overestimate what an 'average' player is in a game). Anyone who's playing casually tends to get stuck in rank 5 or, at BEST, pushed to Legend then dropped to the bottom since they don't care anymore.
So yeah, in regular sports terms, non-dumpster Legend are the folks fit enough to at least get into an actual football team. In fact, most of them probably DO compete at this point in small time tournaments or even show up in HTC itself. Remember about 150 or so players go into each tour stop.
So what's the difference between a "pro" player and a Legend player? Well firstly "professional" is not a term of ability but a job title. It literally means that Hearthstone is your job. But I imagine you mean those folks who are Professional Tournament Goers, the ones who compete for World Championship that we keep fawning over. Well, there's not TOO much of a difference and probably a lot of people at Legend COULD be one of those people someday. But there are a few things to note though:
1. A large number of folks in upper ladder DO compete in regular tournaments, including HTC. Remember that HTC tournaments have about 150 people in it at one time. Note that this is what is meant by "Most can get enough points if they just spam tournaments."
2. The vast majority of those who compete in minor tournaments, or get enough points to get into the major HTC scene never get anywhere, which is why most who get to those top 16 spots nowadays are either the ones we already know about or those 'underground' folks who have been in the upper scene for a few years and finally 'broke out'.
Legend rank just means you have the potential of making it in the competitive scene, sort of like saying "You have what it takes to try for the NFL." Most, though, never get in, and most that do end up a small timer, FAR better than the average man but without that last 2% ability to make a real name for themselves. Same goes in HS. Most Legend players are probably good enough to get into HTC if they try, and probably a few would be among the greats if they had the opportunity, but most won't be able to even if they had easy access to all of the tournaments.
Sidenote: Beware the Dunning-Kruger effect. It's easy to be one of those in the benches going "Oh I could be JUST like one of those pros if I actually tried/have the time/someone gave me the chance" and a lot of people who do make it will tend to say "Oh it's easy for others if they just actually tried/have the time/got the chance." That 2% gap is wider than we play it out to be though.
Sidenote: Beware the Dunning-Kruger effect. It's easy to be one of those in the benches going "Oh I could be JUST like one of those pros if I actually tried/have the time/someone gave me the chance" and a lot of people who do make it will tend to say "Oh it's easy for others if they just actually tried/have the time/got the chance." That 2% gap is wider than we play it out to be though.
Every month legend is achieved by tens of thousands of players. One has to be intoxicated or insane to suggest that all of these players play exactly as well as one another.
This thread is nothing more than a sick brag.
You have reading comprehension issues.
Maybe you should read your own entry post, because he did understand your point. And he is right about it, your connotation is that playing in tournaments requires nothing but money & RNG instead of skill.
Never said that, you're putting words in my mouth completely.
I’m a player who hits legend every month and I’m nowhere near close to the skill level of a pro, excluding some terrible ones. You probably are good with a few decks, pros play perfectly with every deck in the game if they’re one of the good ones. When pros are making lineups they take so much into consideration, and a ton of skill. Look at players like justsaiyan, who has an 88% winrate in tournaments. He is a super good player and great at making lineups. Not only that but pros know when one tech is more powerful than others. I see legend players as the ones netdecking, and pros as the ones making netdecks.
Pros pretty much has more experience than other players even other non pro legends one. In order to being invited in these event or just allowed to participate, they have to accumulate point by: reaching legend. rank, high legend rank, rank 1 in legend. The later is extremely hard to get because at high legends (or even normal rank 5 or above), people are very serious and very carefully to get those point for the events. At that point, the RNG are almost balanced out because they have to play insane amount of games and every one plays top tier deck including pro themselves. Many legend players (including me) usually think: I reach legend, now meme deck and try to get rank 1 legend with it but never serious enough to do that feat every single months. Pros like Kolento do that every month and they are serious about that because it also make their living. Every point counts for them, unlike most of us who never really care
That is the different I guess.
That is why Pavel book is a meme but I still respect him because he has played tons of games by his skill and reached the tournament - thing that I may never be able to do. And Kolento, even though he has never been a world champ but he is the one that reaches rank 1 legend the most and is usually considered one of the most skillful player ever. Still luck I guess but I don't think luck matters to pros win rate if one plays competitive 1000 games a month.
Pros are da best of da best, members of super-elite of this beautiful community. Obviously, some legendary players are as good as pro-players, but that is not the norm.
Watch a recorded tournament VOD. Black out the top of the screen so your can't see one player's hand. Mute it. Just as every turn starts, pause, and determine what play you would make in the exact same situation.
I'll be impressed if anyone here gets the exact plays right more than 75% of turns. Even if you match 90%, or 95%, those subtle differences make a huge impact. What you perceive as a misplay could actually be a deeper strategic gamble that your puny legend mind cannot grasp.
Oh, and deckbuilding for tournament play is a skill in of itself that high legend players never have to address.
''You don't see much of a difference when you play against pro players compared to others''
That's because very often, the decisions the players have to make are very easy and clear, depending on the deck of course)
It's really hard to judge your opponents from one single game on the ladder.. especially in Legend because no players are equal. Thousands of players get there and a huge majority only played the same 2-3 decks (if not only 1) and have no experience with anything else.. whereas another player could be much more experienced and be a great control player as well. You really can't see it when you're just playing on the ladder.
Trust me, big difference between playing an ''uncommon'' archetype well (Some kind of Control Reno, Patron Warrior back in the days, Shudderwock Combo) and pretty much just pure aggro deck.
Also just because you make a mistake, that doesn't mean you are shit and you don't know what you're doing. Even pros can make mistakes and yes, they are aware of it. How often have you watched a streamer make a mistake that he instantly acknowledge? Happens pretty often, to everyone, even myself. The difference is that is happens much more often to lower level players.
Watch a recorded tournament VOD. Black out the top of the screen so your can't see one player's hand. Mute it. Just as every turn starts, pause, and determine what play you would make in the exact same situation.
I'll be impressed if anyone here gets the exact plays right more than 75% of turns. Even if you match 90%, or 95%, those subtle differences make a huge impact. What you perceive as a misplay could actually be a deeper strategic gamble that your puny legend mind cannot grasp.
Oh, and deckbuilding for tournament play is a skill in of itself that high legend players never have to address.
People keep focusing on just the turn by turn. That's like saying you'll do well in professional racing because you can drive really fast.
Firstly, yes, playing the right cards during a turn is important. Just make sure you include the mulligan which, as far as many who are big on the scene goes, is the #1 biggest decision and the #1 most messed up part of in-game decision making.
However then you have to consider that you're at home with no stakes making those decisions which is similar to fussing at how that QB couldn't see that open receiver that you could CLEARLY SEE in your living room. Without having to remember the play, watch for people trying to tackle you, worry over how this next throw could win or lose the game ext. Then remember we're talking 'professionals' as in this is their job. As in they are basically fighting for their paycheck either in the tournament winnings or in doing well enough to get sponsorship deals and to stop having only 10 people watching you on twitch. And hoping you don't do something stupid and end up with 1000 people mocking you on reddit instead.
Which then gets into the fact that games nowadays use a Swiss format, meaning you're playing about 7-9 matches of 3-5 games each with delays you don't get to control in between and knowledge that losing 2 matches means your tournament, and, in many cases, run for the year, is over. You're on a roll and pumped up then get told that you have to wait 40 minutes because someone decided to play a warrior vs warrior mirror. Or you're worn out from a long match and want a break but you have another match coming right up.
So NOW make the play after 6 hours of do-or-die tournaments with your food budget and career on the line after spending about 100 hours last week grinding these games so that you'd hopefully have a clue what moves to play and what decks to bring.
Because we didn't add deck selection. Remember just copy pasting whatever the best ladder deck in VS is a death sentence since the tournament meta works very differently. Pro players tend to bring similar decks NOT because they view them in VS but because they all sit together in teams and spend several weeks hashing together that deck lineup including the correct tech cards, ban picks, and possible matchups.
Compared to rocket scientists and emergency doctors it's still easy as pie, and I bet a pro MTG player would go "yeah I do that and have a lot more to worry about as well." If you're only experience is the middle ranks of Legend and twitch streams of HTC tournaments then you're far better qualified than the 99% of us casuals but still a good long way away from being able to really say that it's so easy a caveman can do it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
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I really don't really notice a huge difference when I play "Pro" players compared to other Legend players. In fact, some "Pro" players that I've come across on ladder make more misplays than other Legend players (who don't have the time or money to constantly grind ladder and/or paying thousands of their own dollars to travel to all these events).
Really the major difference between "Pros" and other Legend players is that the same group of "Pros" are the ones constantly traveling to events (some of them have teams that sponsor them I get that) while Legend players like myself don't want to pay the travel costs or have the time to constantly attend all these events... and also actually have a job in real life. Hotform ("Pro" Player who is less active in Hearthstone now but got 2nd at the World Championship a few years back) actually was talking about the same thing a couple months ago on his stream... saying if you just spam travel to all these events you're bound to rack up a lot of HCT Points.
Pretty much this.
I follow hearthstone tournaments pretty well, and if this theory were to be true I think we'd see a lot more random players finishing high. At every event there's a good amount of "no-names" attending, and some events have had over 100 participants iirc.
It might be an added factor of building a lineup that the pros have much more experience with, I'm not denying the strong presence of RNG.
Every month legend is achieved by tens of thousands of players. One has to be intoxicated or insane to suggest that all of these players play exactly as well as one another.
This thread is nothing more than a sick brag.
You have reading comprehension issues.
I think that most of the players that reach (high) legend regularly could become professionals if they had enough time or guidance from more experienced players. Like you said many people have work or school as a top priority in their life so they do not dedicate that much time in hearthstone even though they may get to legend every month. I guess it all comes down to what you want to do in life and how much you try to get there.
"I will tell you what Velen never taught me.Whosoever stands before the light...inevitably casts a shadow."
I'd say the main difference is that pros can make a living off of hearthstone in some way. Wannabes can't.
Maybe you should read your own entry post, because he did understand your point. And he is right about it, your connotation is that playing in tournaments requires nothing but money & RNG instead of skill.
It depends what the OP means by "major difference."
There isn't a "HS skill" that HS players possess, but non-players lack. Doing well at the game is a function of general and applied intelligence - anyone who is as clever as a typical HS pro, and who has the experience to understand specific match-ups as well as a typical HS pro, can be expected to perform as well as a typical HS pro.
However, I suspect the OP is trivializing the first part of that equation. Most HS pros are very clever people, and most Legend players aren't very clever people - there aren't many C-students at Legend, but there are plenty of Bs. It seems overly optimistic to claim that the main difference between a typical HS pro, and a typical Legend ladder grinder is the amount of time they each spend playing the game, or "spamming travel" to tournaments, as the OP appears to suggest.
The Legend rank is pretty much the start of the competitive scene. The act of reaching it already weeds out 99.5% of the population (no that's NOT a made up number. The couple of thousand of people who make up the NA ladder is only about .5% of the actual NA playerbase. For the record, the number of people who regular go on forums like this one typically make up 1% of a game's playerbase. We tend to REALLLY overestimate what an 'average' player is in a game). Anyone who's playing casually tends to get stuck in rank 5 or, at BEST, pushed to Legend then dropped to the bottom since they don't care anymore.
So yeah, in regular sports terms, non-dumpster Legend are the folks fit enough to at least get into an actual football team. In fact, most of them probably DO compete at this point in small time tournaments or even show up in HTC itself. Remember about 150 or so players go into each tour stop.
So what's the difference between a "pro" player and a Legend player? Well firstly "professional" is not a term of ability but a job title. It literally means that Hearthstone is your job. But I imagine you mean those folks who are Professional Tournament Goers, the ones who compete for World Championship that we keep fawning over. Well, there's not TOO much of a difference and probably a lot of people at Legend COULD be one of those people someday. But there are a few things to note though:
1. A large number of folks in upper ladder DO compete in regular tournaments, including HTC. Remember that HTC tournaments have about 150 people in it at one time. Note that this is what is meant by "Most can get enough points if they just spam tournaments."
2. The vast majority of those who compete in minor tournaments, or get enough points to get into the major HTC scene never get anywhere, which is why most who get to those top 16 spots nowadays are either the ones we already know about or those 'underground' folks who have been in the upper scene for a few years and finally 'broke out'.
Legend rank just means you have the potential of making it in the competitive scene, sort of like saying "You have what it takes to try for the NFL." Most, though, never get in, and most that do end up a small timer, FAR better than the average man but without that last 2% ability to make a real name for themselves. Same goes in HS. Most Legend players are probably good enough to get into HTC if they try, and probably a few would be among the greats if they had the opportunity, but most won't be able to even if they had easy access to all of the tournaments.
Sidenote: Beware the Dunning-Kruger effect. It's easy to be one of those in the benches going "Oh I could be JUST like one of those pros if I actually tried/have the time/someone gave me the chance" and a lot of people who do make it will tend to say "Oh it's easy for others if they just actually tried/have the time/got the chance." That 2% gap is wider than we play it out to be though.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
^ This. So much.
Never said that, you're putting words in my mouth completely.
I’m a player who hits legend every month and I’m nowhere near close to the skill level of a pro, excluding some terrible ones. You probably are good with a few decks, pros play perfectly with every deck in the game if they’re one of the good ones. When pros are making lineups they take so much into consideration, and a ton of skill. Look at players like justsaiyan, who has an 88% winrate in tournaments. He is a super good player and great at making lineups. Not only that but pros know when one tech is more powerful than others. I see legend players as the ones netdecking, and pros as the ones making netdecks.
yeah you are as good as hunterace...
ffs this forum has reached a whole new level of stupidity
Please dude, watch your mouth when talking about my beautiful forum... >:-(
Pros pretty much has more experience than other players even other non pro legends one. In order to being invited in these event or just allowed to participate, they have to accumulate point by: reaching legend. rank, high legend rank, rank 1 in legend. The later is extremely hard to get because at high legends (or even normal rank 5 or above), people are very serious and very carefully to get those point for the events. At that point, the RNG are almost balanced out because they have to play insane amount of games and every one plays top tier deck including pro themselves. Many legend players (including me) usually think: I reach legend, now meme deck and try to get rank 1 legend with it but never serious enough to do that feat every single months. Pros like Kolento do that every month and they are serious about that because it also make their living. Every point counts for them, unlike most of us who never really care
That is the different I guess.
That is why Pavel book is a meme but I still respect him because he has played tons of games by his skill and reached the tournament - thing that I may never be able to do. And Kolento, even though he has never been a world champ but he is the one that reaches rank 1 legend the most and is usually considered one of the most skillful player ever. Still luck I guess but I don't think luck matters to pros win rate if one plays competitive 1000 games a month.
Pros are da best of da best, members of super-elite of this beautiful community. Obviously, some legendary players are as good as pro-players, but that is not the norm.
Watch a recorded tournament VOD. Black out the top of the screen so your can't see one player's hand. Mute it. Just as every turn starts, pause, and determine what play you would make in the exact same situation.
I'll be impressed if anyone here gets the exact plays right more than 75% of turns. Even if you match 90%, or 95%, those subtle differences make a huge impact. What you perceive as a misplay could actually be a deeper strategic gamble that your puny legend mind cannot grasp.
Oh, and deckbuilding for tournament play is a skill in of itself that high legend players never have to address.
Anger is the punishment we give ourselves for someone else's mistake.
''You don't see much of a difference when you play against pro players compared to others''
That's because very often, the decisions the players have to make are very easy and clear, depending on the deck of course)
It's really hard to judge your opponents from one single game on the ladder.. especially in Legend because no players are equal. Thousands of players get there and a huge majority only played the same 2-3 decks (if not only 1) and have no experience with anything else.. whereas another player could be much more experienced and be a great control player as well. You really can't see it when you're just playing on the ladder.
Trust me, big difference between playing an ''uncommon'' archetype well (Some kind of Control Reno, Patron Warrior back in the days, Shudderwock Combo) and pretty much just pure aggro deck.
Also just because you make a mistake, that doesn't mean you are shit and you don't know what you're doing. Even pros can make mistakes and yes, they are aware of it. How often have you watched a streamer make a mistake that he instantly acknowledge? Happens pretty often, to everyone, even myself. The difference is that is happens much more often to lower level players.
People keep focusing on just the turn by turn. That's like saying you'll do well in professional racing because you can drive really fast.
Firstly, yes, playing the right cards during a turn is important. Just make sure you include the mulligan which, as far as many who are big on the scene goes, is the #1 biggest decision and the #1 most messed up part of in-game decision making.
However then you have to consider that you're at home with no stakes making those decisions which is similar to fussing at how that QB couldn't see that open receiver that you could CLEARLY SEE in your living room. Without having to remember the play, watch for people trying to tackle you, worry over how this next throw could win or lose the game ext. Then remember we're talking 'professionals' as in this is their job. As in they are basically fighting for their paycheck either in the tournament winnings or in doing well enough to get sponsorship deals and to stop having only 10 people watching you on twitch. And hoping you don't do something stupid and end up with 1000 people mocking you on reddit instead.
Which then gets into the fact that games nowadays use a Swiss format, meaning you're playing about 7-9 matches of 3-5 games each with delays you don't get to control in between and knowledge that losing 2 matches means your tournament, and, in many cases, run for the year, is over. You're on a roll and pumped up then get told that you have to wait 40 minutes because someone decided to play a warrior vs warrior mirror. Or you're worn out from a long match and want a break but you have another match coming right up.
So NOW make the play after 6 hours of do-or-die tournaments with your food budget and career on the line after spending about 100 hours last week grinding these games so that you'd hopefully have a clue what moves to play and what decks to bring.
Because we didn't add deck selection. Remember just copy pasting whatever the best ladder deck in VS is a death sentence since the tournament meta works very differently. Pro players tend to bring similar decks NOT because they view them in VS but because they all sit together in teams and spend several weeks hashing together that deck lineup including the correct tech cards, ban picks, and possible matchups.
Compared to rocket scientists and emergency doctors it's still easy as pie, and I bet a pro MTG player would go "yeah I do that and have a lot more to worry about as well." If you're only experience is the middle ranks of Legend and twitch streams of HTC tournaments then you're far better qualified than the 99% of us casuals but still a good long way away from being able to really say that it's so easy a caveman can do it.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.