ElephantBanjoGnome wrote:
I think it's funny that you can open 30 packs in this game and still have essentially bugger all. It really is grind-tastic. I still need 60 unique cards and have 1400 dust. Averaging 40 bloody dust a pack it'll take a while before I can sink it in to even one legendary, and I need
about another 15 exactly 21 more after that
Oh don't get me wrong he had gained a few solid neutral cards like the Harvest Golem, good class cards like Feral Spirit, Temple Enforcer, Mana Wyrm and Gladiator's Longbow (OK maybe that's not great), but he definitely had more choices available to him than someone who hadn't opened 30 packs of cards. The problem with the class cards is that they were scattered across the classes so didn't make one particularly desirable to try out, but that'll change in time. (He'd also got his first few dupes which he'd been able to dust to craft a couple of desirable common expert and class cards.)
I think I agree with Trump in that the game isn't pay to win, but you can pay to take a shortcut to getting a lot of the cards you want. (And let's be clear that isn't pay to win, from our experiences at least you've got people like me and Trooper who have dropped a chunk of cash on the game, and people like you and zaphod who haven't spent a penny, and yet we all seem to have plateaued at about the same rank, which would suggest it's more down to skill than having more cards available.)
The 80 packs I bought really padded out my collection early on, (no money on packs spent since May!), which has fed into far more dupes with the packs I've opened since then, which has fed into more dust to give me more freedom to create epics and legendaries. (And even then I've burned 1600 dust on shite like Cenarius.)
I'm managing 10 packs every two weeks just from gold accrual, so 80 packs represents a 'head start' of four months in pure card collection terms, but I wouldn't say it's made the game pay to win for me, as our tussles in duels have certainly shown (where you're well ahead), and also my own experiences in Ranked, where my most successful decks have been those lightest on legendaries.
I'd say the closest I get to a legendary heavy deck is my 'Paladin Of Doom' deck (five legendaries) but that's WAAAAAYYYY too slow for the current meta so I only get to take it for a spin in Casual.
I can see why it looks more grindy from your perspective in terms of filling out your card collection, but lest we forget you've been playing this game for many, many months now, and haven't spent a penny!