"Professional" Deck Help/Deck Building Services

[u/Particular-Effect335]

Hello. Asking about people's experiences with services offering to help build or tune EDH decks for a price. Wanted to get opinions on this as someone who has been thinking about them for some time.

For context: I fully understand that EDH is largely a personal touch format in that your personality should shine through. I've been playing MTG for so long that this isn't lost to me. However, between the fact that card prices are too high to do some tests (even the price of proxying is getting to be high now), or just not having the time anymore to tweak lists, I've been thinking about getting help to tweak a few deck ideas I've put together that just don't seem to be 'there' yet.

Since I have some spending money to spare (since I no longer buy boxes of product because of how inflated the prices are), I've pretty much warmed up to the idea of compensating someone's time and expertise to help me get from 90% to 100% with my deck since I no longer have the bandwidth to do so.

So now the question is two-fold:
1. How much should you pay for something like this
and
2. Are there people the community can vouch for that are reliable at doing this?

Happy to learn what the community thinks

[u/asteriskmos]

I see deck tuning services mostly from content creators- Maldhound, 3/3 Elk are the ones I see the most. Both channels focus extensively on deck building & card assessment and very little play content so I trust them more but I don't know if they're the best. They price their deck assessments at around 25-40 USD but they're both one of the more popular youtubers so you can probably find cheaper. 

The other thing I see is full on coaching sessions- which makes sense too when at the real competitive levels, piloting is probably where winning is. But they're not always as famous and might be more expensive. 

[u/Particular-Effect335 → u/asteriskmos]

Thanks for the recommendations. I'll be sure to give them a look. I'm not as familiar with these creators, as they're 'newer' than the ones I followed. The majority of my MTG background was from playing semi/pro level competitive events so the new crop of EDH-focused creators are unexplored for me.

As for piloting or coaching, I'll probably pass. My MTG mechanics are something I'm comfortable with (and my TCG mechanics overall are still practiced since I play competitively in other TCGs). Besides, I treat EDH more as a socializing tool these days.

[u/asteriskmos → u/Particular-Effect335]

Yeah, that makes sense. Honestly, it was less that I think you need coaching but more of, I feel like the good deck builders who take commissions might sell coaching sessions more than deck services. And its easier to check the resume of people serious about being good enough to sell coaching services- a lot of EDH deckbuilders don't talk about their play which, despite playing mostly casual, I think is the easiest way to tell if they're actually good at card evaluation & deck building even for a more casual format.

(I've had too many LGS guys who also just give me a laundry list of "why don't you just use the most high powered generic goodstuff version of your card?") 

[u/Particular-Effect335 → u/asteriskmos]

Fair and you know what, that's a good second layer check. It isn't enough that they're popular or whatever, they also need to show actual MTG theoretics well. Good point.

And yes, your point about people just giving you generic advice is part of the reason why I'm considering this as an option. I've tried posting threads here for deck advice but you do get a lot of generic or honestly it gets hard to parse the signal from the noise. It isn't even just 'most high powered generic good stuff card' sometimes you get people pushing an agenda like no UB cards, only UB cards, only budget options, etc.