While I am usually a fanboy, enjoy solo-content, and am more than willing to accept some imperfections, I was also pretty disappointed with this. If you look at the gaming experience you play 8 pretty straightforward games in a row with a pretty similar deck, where the hero power quickly outpowers most cards and no option for any deck customization. Felt pretty bland.
From the storytelling perspective, it felt like the management summary of Jaina's story with fast-forward pressed down. As a WC3 and WoW veteran, I am pretty familiar with the lore but I wonder if anyone who isn't already familiar actually got any more idea at all. Hard to judge for me, but it felt like a bunch of disjointed one-liners to me.
Though the voice acting and portraits were good...
I don't mind the RNG. Yes, you can get (un)lucky but there is also a fair bit of skill involved in weighing immediate tempo vs card quality vs long term payoff... but the time you spend waiting while picking cards (your opponent's turn only of course ;) !) is slowing it down so much that it sucks out much of the fun.
So, starting from the 26th, we are protected from >2 duplicates for commons, rares and epics. If I understand how it works correctly, then this is the best time to dust goldens if you have one or two golden copies of a card, but don't have 2 normal copies. Not a super-common situation, but for example:
I have nearly all epics from Classic, missing just 8. I have one regular copy of Cabal Shadow Priest and one golden copy. I have never dusted the golden version (don't really need the dust, and even though Cabal is not a meta card, I just liked to keep the second copy around while I didn't get a second regular one).
Due to the duplicate protection rules, if I now dust my golden Cabal Shadow priest, I will get it again in the first 9 epics that I get from classic. (If I dust it after the 26th, as I understand it, the card will be counted as 'already obtained' and I will not get it again. I will first get the 8 missing epics and after that I will just get random epics after because the set is counted as complete.) The only caveat here is when Blizz starts counting cards as 'already obtained'. I assume on the 26th, but I could not find any confirmation of that.
The same is true for commons and rare of course, but I don't have any of those in golden that I don't already have 2 normal copies of...
I'm a bit surprised, as the meta loos pretty healthy right now compared to several other meta's we had in the past. But if the changes are indeed small tweaks, then I'd hope for
Though there is a lot of good advice already here, I'd like to add a few things, being a veteran budget player:
Don't overfocus on Legendaries. I started playing during GvG and often lost 'because' my opponents played cool legendaries, like Loatheb and Doctor Boom/ So I crafted Doctor Boom as soon as I could, and bought the Naxx adventure, so I had those cards too. I added them to my decks and... still lost! Turned out that I lost more to misplaying then too OP-OP cards.
Though legendaries sometimes are essential in certain decks, at other times they are completely replaceable. Yes, Zilliax is a very good card, that because of its versatility and power can be tossed in almost any deck. But in most decks, it is very replaceable. Keeper Stalladris is also an excellent example of a card that is very replaceable in token druid. On the other hand, Myra's unstable element is absolutely essential in Pogo rogue because you need to empty your deck to start shuffling Pogo Hoppers in. When looking at decks, try to understand which Legendaries are replaceable.
Dusting is uneconomical! I mean REALLY! uneconomical ;) You have 15 legendaries now. Suppose you dust them all and with your 500 dust, you can craft 4 legendaries. Now in 8 months time. some will rotate out and some will become useless because other cards from your deck rotated out. Let's assume secret paladin becomes meta and you want to craft Commander Rhyssa again - so you then dust your 4 useless legendaries... now you have lost your 14 other legendaries in the process!
Don't overfocus on one or two decks. We have seen lots of nerfs in the past to commons are rares that made decks with 2 legendaries and 4 epics unplayable. That's 4800 dust down the drain. Focus on crafting cards that will always be playable/
While I am usually a fanboy, enjoy solo-content, and am more than willing to accept some imperfections, I was also pretty disappointed with this. If you look at the gaming experience you play 8 pretty straightforward games in a row with a pretty similar deck, where the hero power quickly outpowers most cards and no option for any deck customization. Felt pretty bland.
From the storytelling perspective, it felt like the management summary of Jaina's story with fast-forward pressed down. As a WC3 and WoW veteran, I am pretty familiar with the lore but I wonder if anyone who isn't already familiar actually got any more idea at all. Hard to judge for me, but it felt like a bunch of disjointed one-liners to me.
Though the voice acting and portraits were good...
Raid the Sky Temple sets you back 1600 dust and is neither good nor fun. Easily the worst!
Pretty cool! Enables [Hearthstone Card (Sylvanas) Not Found] level swings. What about Preparation + this + Eviscerate?
I don't mind the RNG. Yes, you can get (un)lucky but there is also a fair bit of skill involved in weighing immediate tempo vs card quality vs long term payoff... but the time you spend waiting while picking cards (your opponent's turn only of course ;) !) is slowing it down so much that it sucks out much of the fun.
So, starting from the 26th, we are protected from >2 duplicates for commons, rares and epics. If I understand how it works correctly, then this is the best time to dust goldens if you have one or two golden copies of a card, but don't have 2 normal copies. Not a super-common situation, but for example:
I have nearly all epics from Classic, missing just 8. I have one regular copy of Cabal Shadow Priest and one golden copy. I have never dusted the golden version (don't really need the dust, and even though Cabal is not a meta card, I just liked to keep the second copy around while I didn't get a second regular one).
Due to the duplicate protection rules, if I now dust my golden Cabal Shadow priest, I will get it again in the first 9 epics that I get from classic. (If I dust it after the 26th, as I understand it, the card will be counted as 'already obtained' and I will not get it again. I will first get the 8 missing epics and after that I will just get random epics after because the set is counted as complete.) The only caveat here is when Blizz starts counting cards as 'already obtained'. I assume on the 26th, but I could not find any confirmation of that.
The same is true for commons and rare of course, but I don't have any of those in golden that I don't already have 2 normal copies of...
I'm a bit surprised, as the meta loos pretty healthy right now compared to several other meta's we had in the past. But if the changes are indeed small tweaks, then I'd hope for
Though there is a lot of good advice already here, I'd like to add a few things, being a veteran budget player:
Hope this is useful :)