While I get your general point I still disagree overall. If everybody went F2P the game would be dead. Hearthstone is my favorite game, I enjoy it a lot and one of the reasons I'm fine with spending some €€ on it is that I think the devs are doing a great job of entertaining me and have earned my support. I'm not naive, I know that Blizzard is a huge company and the usual capitalism stuff happens, but there's got to be some middle ground between F2P and EA FC -like monetisation. My feelings probably just boil down to "I get something out of it, I pay something back" - and as long as there are no ads in the game, my time spent playing it does not do much for the people who provide it for me.

Community feedback has been heard, they're going to dial some requirements back while keeping the new XP numbers:

https://hearthstone.blizzard.com/en-us/news/24087316

Oh my Yogg, have you seen the changes to the daily and weekly quests? I'm reeeeeally pissed about those. From what I've seen so far all the quests have gotten harder and reward more XP - but of course the changes have not been made proportionally. Like, the "win 5 games in ranked" quest now requires you to win 15 (!) games and grants something like +20% XP. There's also a lovely quest that wants you to play 60 (!!) Minis. Thanks, I hate it! To be fair, I'm a hyper engaged player and might even profit from this bullshit, but the majority of players isn't and that's one horrible change for anyone with a casual approach to the game. What the fuck, Blizzard?

Whizbang brought me the craziest pack I've ever opened! I wonder what score this would have made in our on site pack opener :D

I've had the last week off so time wasn't much of an issue. Adding to that, Whizbang's Workshop has completely surprised me - I haven't had that much fun playing Standard in years, if ever! The result was me reaching legend with Tempo Demon Hunter despite running out of bonus starts on plat 5 (only the third time I ever got there in Standard!). What a great way to make use of my newly acquired 1.000 wins portrait :-)

Other than that meta deck, I've enjoyed a DK list that is almost identical to the one linkblade posted and some Wheel of Death games. Forge of Wills is an absurdly strong card and this deck is one of the biggest surprises for me. Seems like most everybody took the wheel for a meme card but it turned out being the center piece of a tier 2 (?) meta deck!

In Wild I've tried out Draggro Priest. It feels super strong when it gets rolling, but after some testing I've decided the inconsistency isn't worth the potential extra turn. Maybe I'll look into a non-Shadow tempo version next. Then I've toyed around with some of the new cards that could fit in Pirate Rogue, not sure which build is the best yet though. I've only ruled out the new Garotte version so far, which is very popular among the pros (Corb got rank 1 with it today), but feels just as inconsistent as Draggro Priest to me. Maybe it's just a big brain deck? I don't know. The month was finished with some Wheel of Death (turn 3 Coin Bloodbloom Wheel lol) and Reno Hunter shenanigans (all golden since last week!), so I was super surprised once more when I learned that my rank 851 finish was enough to earn that elusive 11x bonus!

Not sure where to go this month yet. I've found a Highlander Rogue that looks fun for Standard on twitter and my first few wins in Wild came in by playing a Crescendo Warlock. Might try to get the latter to legend, it's fun and takes people by surprise. I'd also really like to play linkblade's Hero Power Druid in Standard, but I don't have Fog anymore :/

Had a tough week but the pack opening definitely was a highlight, no small thanks to the give away bundle - thanks again! Here's my haul from 145 packs:

Signature: Raza (first ever from a regular pack), Sonya

Golden: Tarim, Boom, Whizbang

Regular: Ci'Cigi, Owlonius, Hemet, Pipsi, Zarimi, Goldbeard, Shudderblock, Wheel of Death, Zilliax (got upgraded to golden already)

Very happy with those, especially Whizbang, Zilliax and Zarimi.

I totally feel you there. Sometimes the game makes me play it in ways that aren't much fun or healthy anymore and that's not a very good sign I guess. I'm trying to avoid that kind of behaviour and being aware of the issue certainly is a step in the right direction. Lately I've made some decisions in that regard that should help.

Lol that paragraph sounds way more serious than I've meant it to be, but the point is: You're not alone! Try to keep in mind that it's a game after all and it's supposed to be fun!

Celestalon has solved this some time ago, I keep his tweet bookmarked for occasions like this:

https://x.com/Celestalon/status/1724150493323375031?s=20

Convenience transcript: 

If you want the most total cards (fewest duplicates): Catch Up -> Expansion -> Class -> Standard packs

If you want more latest expansion packs (risk of more duplicates): Catch Up -> Standard -> Class -> Expansion packs

I'm having trouble with the site search. Today I wanted to post on the "Golden Hero Power, completionist and grind" thread, so I typed in "completionist" and searched for threads. While I found it, the thread shows 0 answers and no starting post. I dug up my last comment to it from my profile site to get to the correct place. Turns out the URL isn't 100% the same but I'm pretty sure the search delivered the correct site, only the display of it seems to be bugged.

Next milestone done and boy what a grind it was considering the current state of DH. 

Here's my current overall standing:

What's next? A break from grinding. I have decided I'll only play stuff that's really fun for me in the future and went on a dusting spree, killing everything that won't find a home in a cool deck. With the gains, I've started upgrading my favorite decks to golden. Most of them aren't very competitive but I'm fine with that. I think I'll try to fully upgrade a deck for each class that has reached the 1.000 wins treshold, even if it's going to take some time. Current plans:

Mage - QL Rainbow Mage for the giga flavor - done!
Hunter - Reno Hunter with Beasts and Secrets - 27k dust to go. I might switch to a pure Beast deck yet, we'll see.
Warlock - Curse Warlock - 28k dust to go. I've crafted Commander Ulthok for this! :D
Rogue - Pirate Rogue - done!
Priest - Shadow Aggro Priest - almost done, I'm only waiting to see if the new Dragon version ("Draggro Priest") will be better / more fun
DH - QL Il'gynoth DH - almost done but can't be finished because there's a bug preventing people from upgrading cards like Mana Burn (DH Initiate?). Reno Big Demon DH is a good alternative.

Thanks, that's very kind of you!

Yay, that's so awesome! Congrats to lemushki and sule as well!

I'll see what I can do about an interesting Wild spotlight Flux :-)

I'm with the doubters for now. 5 Mana is just too much for an egg unless you have a godly follow up turn prepared. Cool art though!

Not sure about this one... I'll give it the benefit of the doubt because of the attack buff. That way, you can even value trade with small stuff.

Ooof. I have a bad feeling about this one. That's tons of value if set up correctly, but then again, it's a 10 Mana spell. Maybe it even helps DJ Manastorm become relevant?

RNG again and the spells are temporary. Big meh from me. The mini is definitely playable but is that worth running the original? Not for me.

One of the best cards in the Spell Druid deck that I'm so looking forward to playing. You've got damage, you've got Mana cheat, you even get a spell school in case that might become meaningful at one point. Crazy card, strong nerf candidate if Spell Druid proves to be OP!

I feel like there will be something going on down the line that we all don't see coming yet. Maybe Priest will find a way to abuse this with the help of Pip and some cost reduction stuff. As things stand right now, I'm not very happy about the fact that this is the diamond card on the paid reward track.

Nope, not for me. Too much RNG involved, too hard to make use of. I'm 90% sure this will be the signature legendary that will come with my bundle. Yikes.

I don't like it. Sure, DH attacks a lot, but it seems quite clunky and there are better options available already. I'll pass.