I'll keep this to-the-point, bear with me. :) I played Hearthstone for a very brief period when it was first released years ago, but ever since I haven't really played it. Occasionally, over the past few years, I have logged in just cuz... mostly I have been prompted with the newcomer/beginner bundle, and I have kept purchasing it because I always intended to take up this game seriously.
AND... I want to get into Hearthstone, like regularly. I have always wanted to. I don't mind spending money on this game, or games in general. Questions I need help/guidance with:
1) Pre-purchasing Descent: To start off, what should I buy that will help me most? GIven that pre-purchase is the best value, should I be going for the 60 DoD pack bundle or the 100 DoD pack bundle?
2) Other Purchases/Building strategy: I have read a guide on reddit as well as watched a helpful youtube video about deck building/buying strategy. I appreciate that having a meaningful collection of cards is only viable over longer term (like 12 months or more). This probably means I should be investing in the Classic packs too.. question is how much, and in what order should I buy the DoD packs vs. Classic packs. Let's assume I can spend around 50-70 euros every month, what is the best way to approach the coming months. Should I be getting 10 packs each from Saviors of Uldum and Rise of Shadows (to get the legendaries)? I intend to just ignore Rastakhan's Rumble, Boomsday Project and The Witchwood since those cards will be relegated to wild by April (about the time I would have a good sense of how to play the game).
3) Gameplay: Since I am coming back after quite a while, I want to practice against AI .. but strangely I cannot find this option anywhere. I am level 25 on the ladder (I dont recall progressing from 50 to 25 at all). In fact I clearly remember that this was the initial rank that was assigned to me the very first time.. so I don't get that part of the guides at all. Is it possible to replay the tutorials/AI opponents?
4) PVE: I never really tried any of the dungeons that came out but I have been keeping an eye on it. I love the concept. Do the dungeons yield anything worth getting? Should I be buying some of them and trying to progress through them? Or would I need a better collection of cards before I can do that?
5) Share any other pearls of wisdom that you might think would be beneficial to someone in my position.
Thank you very much for taking the time to read through this, I highly appreciate it. :) Looking forward to join your ranks!
That’s a bunch of questions! So fist of all, take it slow. Don’t try to enter the game at high level, the learning process is unique and super fun!
But here some answers:
1) Prepurchase is great to get a large collection. Without it, it‘s allmost impossible to catch up. As you don’t mind spending money, go for it!
At some point, you should decide if you prefere Standard or wild playmode. The later is long term cheaper and more diverse but less balanced and less impacted by new expansions. Also, aquiring those old cards doesn’t come cheap as you can’t open those packs anymore.
2) Classic is allways a safe Investment. If you want to spend 50 bugs on packs on top of prepurchase, those are the way to go.
As for the 2018 expansions, i would mostly ignore them. They are low powerlevel anyways. You may buy single packs with in game Gold though, until you get the first legendary. From april 2020 on, Focus on the new expansions. Until then, there is plenty of other stuff to do!
3) You don’t start at Level 50 because your Account existed before that Update. It is impossible do drop below rank 25, once you reach it. An AI opponent can be found in the Single Player mode, the „innkeeper“, but he is not very challenging ... good for the first days.
4) PVE content has changed a lot over the years. Old content, like Naxxramus, Black rock mountain, league of explorers etc are mini expansions. They cost money but reward a lot of cards that aren‘t found in packs. All of those are in the wild Format though. Ignore them for now, you allways can come back later. Those adventures require you to have a big collection!!
Newer content is free to play but doesn’t reward any cards. Try out Dungeon runs, Monster Hunt and Boom Labs! They are great to learn the game and a ton of fun. It will probably take you some time to complete them all.
The newest adventures cost money again but reward packs aswell. The Price is above the pack value though! It‘s up to you if you want unlock the content. It‘s fun once in a while but all at once is a bit much...
5) Consider crafting whizbang the wonderful. He will be gone in april but he unlocks 18 different and semi powerfull decks at once! (You get a random deck each time you queue ladder)
Finally, have fun! HS is awesome and offers a lot to explore :)
Thanks a bunch for the detailed response mate! In response to the first point; I am pretty sure I will be steering clear of wild, and sticking to standard. At least for the forseeable future; no need to play at an extra disadvantage :D
Point well taken about the PVE content, I'll hold my horses on that. Maybe a few months down the road once I feel I have a nice collection. I'll also go for Whizbang the wonderful before April, seems like an interesting pick.
Most fingers have pointed to the 100 pack bundle so I think I will go for it. Hell, someone even recommended that pre-purchasing both bundles every 4 months can be a viable strat. Everything else can be acquired with gold. :O what do you think about that?
Most fingers have pointed to the 100 pack bundle so I think I will go for it. Hell, someone even recommended that pre-purchasing both bundles every 4 months can be a viable strat. Everything else can be acquired with gold. :O what do you think about that?
Pre-purchasing both does yield the highest value, and it feels like just the right number of cards once you've opened them (and bought a few more packs with your gold to hit the next legendary).
If you are a completionist, you will need to buy maybe one more bundle of 60 packs to get yourself pretty close to having the full set. (You may want to leave yourself a bit shy of complete, as you will be obtaining a few more packs as promos and prizes.)
All very great tips above. In the mean time, you can theoretically "test" cards in most Tavern Brawls. Usually, they give you a deck to play with but sometimes they'll make you come with your own cards. It's a great way to kill time alongside battlegrounds which can be found along with arena under "modes"
I took a quick glance at your collection. There are a few nice cards but it looks pretty bleak honestly.
Now, I'm not sure if I understand you correctly, whether you actually want to get into the game long term and build a collection (or if you are a collector in any way). You just said that you understand how collection-building is more interesting for long term players, and that you want to play it regularly. I mean, you can play Hearthstone regularly just fine starting today, but it's quite different if you want to play it for 6 months or so, or the next couple years.
The thing is, if you care about playing short-term and have no interest in collecting, it makes more sense to aggressively disenchant cards that you have no need for, and instead craft those that you want. In that case, it would also make sense to avoid all older sets and focus on the new ones. It would also affect your purchasing strategy, because in that case, you can focus more on sets you want many cards from, and less on those that only have a few you'd just craft. Also, you'd have to spend significantly less.
If you care about playing it long term, than I personally would recomming building up a collection and NOT neglect Wild sets entirely. Of course, it all depends on how YOU want to play the game. But speaking from my own experience: Wild gets more interesting the longer you have played, and you'll appreciate having another mode with a different meta and more cards available to you, instead of being limited to your Standard collection. I tend to get attached to some cards, and I like to have the option to try out different things, or replay some decks I used to like, and I like to slowly fill out the blank spots in my collection. I'm glad I never disenchanted anything that dropped out of Standard or the meta, and that I can enjoy Wild mode just as much (oftentimes more) as Standard.
Anyway, about catching up:
If you want to get short-term good progression and build some strong decks, one good deck roughly costs something around 6000 dust nowadays. There are some that are cheaper, there are also a few budget decks that work reasonably well, and on the other hand we currently have quite a few competitive Standard decks that are closer to 10.000. You won't need to spend that much on every single deck, because there are overlaps and you'll also get (hopefully) quite a few good cards from you packs as well, but at roughly 90-100 dust on average per pack, you can expect that per deck, you require maybe 30-50 packs at least, if that's the strategy you want to go for. It oftentimes really depends on what legendaries you get and how many you have to craft.
If you go for the long-term collection-building route: As a rule of thumb, you should get about 80-100 packs per set to get all the commons, most of the rares, about half the epics and with some luck 6-8 legendaries (out of 23). In other words, that's roughly the baseline you should go for. If you purchase those amounts, you will have a good enough collection, though it's more than likely that you'd have to craft a few epics and legendaries that are still missing for some refined decks.
You can purchase that for Classic, Rise of Shadows, Saviors of Uldum, along with the 100 pack pre-order for Descent of Dragons to have a solid Standard collection, though you'll still be missing quite a few important cards fromst last year expansions, to play even semi-competitively in Standard until April.
Since you asked about the order of purchase: That's honestly a bit difficult to answer. While every set has its own theme and a unique keyword or mechanic, you'll end up using cards from all the sets available to you to make these themes and mechanics work. In terms of relevancy and "power" (as in: number of good cards per set), Witchwood and Rastakhan's Rumble are relatively unimportant, wheras Rise of Shadows and Boomsday project are sort of on the same level, and Saviors of Uldum is arguably a bit above that. I'd have to take a closer look at it, but Boomsday, Shadows and Uldum are the best sets right now. Classic isn't really THAT fundamental anymore. There are quite a few cards that are good to have, and that you'll find in decks all the time, but there are also very many that simply don't matter anymore or can be replaced with new cards. While I would say that Classic has some priority, I disagree that you NEED to have a lot of Classic cards just to start out. You also keep getting Classic packs from Tavern Brawls and some of the daily quests over time.
Now, most of what I said was about competitive playing and meta-relevancy, and I don't know if that's even your goal. And frankly, I'm not a fan of purchasing massive amounts of packs and start out with a nearly full collection, because to me, one aspect of Hearthstone is to slowly get there, to start out with nothing and improving your decks over time. It's, in my opinion at least, how the game should be to new players.
If there's one thing I'd really recommend, it's to enjoy the low rank experience instead of rushing it and getting into the competitive scene ASAP. Enjoy trying out sub-optimal cards and strategies against other new players who do the same. Find out what playstyle you like, what kind of strategy feels good to you, what effects you like using, have some fun with whatever new legendary you open in a pack etc. You'll soon enough get to the point where you'll find yourself in a highly competitive environment where only the best cards are worthwhile, and where "having fun" is sometimes strangely difficult. There's no need to rush it.
As it was already mentioned, the PvE stuff is great for (re-)learning the game, particularly Dungeon Run, Monster Hunt and the Boomsday Puzzles (Rumble Run slightly less so). You need no collection at all for it, it's free, you'll see and be able to try out many different cards from all the older sets, learn the keywords that were introduced over time, and get a good understanding of how to build decks and play strategically. Again, there's no need to rush. Just have fun.
Hey Dunscot, thanks for the detailed response. I've read it a couple of times to absorb everything. My thoughts (not in any order necessarily):
You are right, having fun is the core point of the game. Of any game, for that matter, but I am very familiar with the thin line between fun vs. hardcore & no fun. Maybe I missed specifying this earlier, but I am in no hurry to get "competitive" or reach legend. That's not the goal at all, for now at least. I want to experience different parts of the game and find my place; of course have fun while doing that. THAT is the goal.
Having said that, I don't want to get stomped on while doing the above. Which is why I am okay with spending to catch up. I am leaning in favor of pre-purchasing both bundles as that is the highest value I can get. It's also a timed window in which I can redeem this; so I might as well get it instead of regretting later.
Therefore: 160 packs and 2 guaranteed legendaries seem like a good place to start. This should also give me plenty of dust to craft any missing cards to make 2 (?) strong decks at least
In the subsequent 2 months, say January and February I can acquire (for argument's sake) 60 + 60 Uldum packs. By March 2020 I should have a clearer idea of what I want to do in the game, what bits attract me and the ramifications of that on how my collection needs to grow. So I can take it from there...
The gold that I acquire from quests and other activities from December through March -- I wonder what I will do with that. Not sure if I will dump it in Classic or Uldum or even Dragons for that matter. Any recommendations? I will probably save a few thousand before I spend the gold.
My understanding is that with the above strategy, I will still be pretty low ranked because my collection will mostly consist of cards from one xpac only. But it won't be "weak" by any means so I should be able to have fun, grabbing wins here and there, learning everything that this game has to offer.
Another question: is there a pack opening strategy I should be following? I know that the first 10 packs of any xpac definitely grant a legendary. Why do people stop after that? I understand the next legendary can take anywhere from 20-40 packs but is that the sole reason? In simpler words, I don't need to wait/hold on 10th December for anything i.e. I will simply open the 160 packs, correct?
I don't want to get stomped on while doing the above. Which is why I am okay with spending to catch up. I am leaning in favor of pre-purchasing both bundles as that is the highest value I can get. It's also a timed window in which I can redeem this; so I might as well get it instead of regretting later. [...]
My understanding is that with the above strategy, I will still be pretty low ranked because my collection will mostly consist of cards from one xpac only. But it won't be "weak" by any means so I should be able to have fun, grabbing wins here and there, learning everything that this game has to offer.
I can absolutely understand you. It's no fun if you feel like you stand no chance. And generally speaking, I wouldn't tell you not to purchase anything. It will definitely help, and pre-order bundles offer a pretty good deal.
However, there are two things I'd want you to consider, again speaking from personal experience:
1) Choosing from 300 cards is more challenging than choosing from 50, if you can't tell what works and what doesn't. And for the time being, copying decklists (at least beyond basic lists) won't be an option for you, since your collection will be, as you said, mostly limited to one expansion. In other words, you absolutely need to get a basic understanding of deckbuildng to make use of whatever cards you get. Starting with basic cards and upgrading those decks step by step is, in my opinion, a good way to just have any starting point and getting familiar with strengths and weaknesses, giving you an idea in which direction you want to upgrade.
2) The quality of your cards (or your collection) is almost meaningless if you lack experience. One can't really replace the other, if you don't want to lose constantly. Maybe not to the point that you'd lose every single game with the best deck currently available, but probably still quite a few, even against much weaker decks. On the other hand, even with basic cards and a few minor upgrades (essentially what you have now), you should be able to win a few games and have some fun if you know what you are doing.
I say that to encourage you to try your luck with what you already have, and get some experience. Start building decks, start playing. The expansion comes out on the 10th, so you have some time before you get to open your packs. Even if you should lose more than you win, you will benefit from it. Also keep in mind that, due to the variance Hearthstone comes with, losing streaks can always happen.
I honestly don't know how rank 25 looks like these days. It is probably more demanding than it used to be, consdering that you'd have to play quite a bit to get from 50-25. In other words, the people you meet at 25 have probably already been playing for at least a month. I can only speculate what quality your deck should have at that level (though Casual mode might also be an alternative), but I'd be surprised if you have a completely miserable time.
Since we don't even know half the cards from the new expansion, nobody can tell you what you will be able to achieve with your packs, and how good or bad your decks would turn out to be. But I can say with some confidence, that packs alone won't be sufficient for you to win games. And while experience alone won't win you every game either (not even close), it is essential to stand a chance.
The gold that I acquire from quests and other activities from December through March -- I wonder what I will do with that. Not sure if I will dump it in Classic or Uldum or even Dragons for that matter. Any recommendations? I will probably save a few thousand before I spend the gold.
Depending on how much you play, you might get something around 2000+ Gold per month. The daily quests will grant you 50-60 per day, and I assume you will play a bit more, so on average perhaps 30-50 gold from wins per day, so maybe about 10.000 gold in four months. What you should purchase will depend primarily on what you want or what you are missing, and on what can be recommended by that point (since the meta will shift no doubt). There really is no way to tell you right now. Ask again in a month or two.
Another question: is there a pack opening strategy I should be following? I know that the first 10 packs of any xpac definitely grant a legendary. Why do people stop after that? I understand the next legendary can take anywhere from 20-40 packs but is that the sole reason? In simpler words, I don't need to wait/hold on 10th December for anything i.e. I will simply open the 160 packs, correct?
The "buy 10 from each set" is usually the advice thrown around for new players to get the most amount of legendaries/dust in the least amount of time/packs. In every set, you are guaranteed to get a legendary within the first 10 packs; a hard rule that was established about two years ago. However, 10 packs aren't really getting you much. As I said, 80-100 packs is what you should usually aim for to get most of the cards, and about 250-300 (I think) if you want a full set (more for Classic, since it is a much larger set).
Beyond the 10 packs, legendaries can take a while. Theoretically, you CAN open two legendaries within just 2 or 3 packs. You can even get two within one single pack. It's just very, very unlikely. Every set has an individual "counter" where a legendary is more likely to show up the more packs you have opened since the last one, with a close to 100% chance (officially denied, but large scale community research suggests as much) for a legendary to appear after 40 packs of no legendary.
In other words, it doesn't matter how many DoD packs you open, it will be a different counter for every other set. You can safely open the 160 packs, it won't have any impact on other packs you purchase. The only "strategy" you can follow is to ask yourself how many cards you want of a given set, and in case your last legendary has been about 20-30 packs ago in a specific set, you might want to buy a few more packs to get another legendary out of it.
don't spend money on classic set. just craft useful cards . there's not that many of them.
literally only 2 or 3 classic netural legendaries see play. a few epics and as for the other cards just craft them.
let's you want to play druid. starfall, nourish and wrath and power of the wild. 2 common and 2 rare. that's it. the same goes for other classes more or less.
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Hello Heathpwners!
I'll keep this to-the-point, bear with me. :) I played Hearthstone for a very brief period when it was first released years ago, but ever since I haven't really played it. Occasionally, over the past few years, I have logged in just cuz... mostly I have been prompted with the newcomer/beginner bundle, and I have kept purchasing it because I always intended to take up this game seriously.
Anyhow, as things stand, here is my current collection
AND... I want to get into Hearthstone, like regularly. I have always wanted to. I don't mind spending money on this game, or games in general. Questions I need help/guidance with:
1) Pre-purchasing Descent: To start off, what should I buy that will help me most? GIven that pre-purchase is the best value, should I be going for the 60 DoD pack bundle or the 100 DoD pack bundle?
2) Other Purchases/Building strategy: I have read a guide on reddit as well as watched a helpful youtube video about deck building/buying strategy. I appreciate that having a meaningful collection of cards is only viable over longer term (like 12 months or more). This probably means I should be investing in the Classic packs too.. question is how much, and in what order should I buy the DoD packs vs. Classic packs. Let's assume I can spend around 50-70 euros every month, what is the best way to approach the coming months. Should I be getting 10 packs each from Saviors of Uldum and Rise of Shadows (to get the legendaries)? I intend to just ignore Rastakhan's Rumble, Boomsday Project and The Witchwood since those cards will be relegated to wild by April (about the time I would have a good sense of how to play the game).
3) Gameplay: Since I am coming back after quite a while, I want to practice against AI .. but strangely I cannot find this option anywhere. I am level 25 on the ladder (I dont recall progressing from 50 to 25 at all). In fact I clearly remember that this was the initial rank that was assigned to me the very first time.. so I don't get that part of the guides at all. Is it possible to replay the tutorials/AI opponents?
4) PVE: I never really tried any of the dungeons that came out but I have been keeping an eye on it. I love the concept. Do the dungeons yield anything worth getting? Should I be buying some of them and trying to progress through them? Or would I need a better collection of cards before I can do that?
5) Share any other pearls of wisdom that you might think would be beneficial to someone in my position.
Thank you very much for taking the time to read through this, I highly appreciate it. :) Looking forward to join your ranks!
That’s a bunch of questions! So fist of all, take it slow. Don’t try to enter the game at high level, the learning process is unique and super fun!
But here some answers:
1) Prepurchase is great to get a large collection. Without it, it‘s allmost impossible to catch up. As you don’t mind spending money, go for it!
At some point, you should decide if you prefere Standard or wild playmode. The later is long term cheaper and more diverse but less balanced and less impacted by new expansions. Also, aquiring those old cards doesn’t come cheap as you can’t open those packs anymore.
2) Classic is allways a safe Investment. If you want to spend 50 bugs on packs on top of prepurchase, those are the way to go.
As for the 2018 expansions, i would mostly ignore them. They are low powerlevel anyways. You may buy single packs with in game Gold though, until you get the first legendary. From april 2020 on, Focus on the new expansions. Until then, there is plenty of other stuff to do!
3) You don’t start at Level 50 because your Account existed before that Update. It is impossible do drop below rank 25, once you reach it. An AI opponent can be found in the Single Player mode, the „innkeeper“, but he is not very challenging ... good for the first days.
4) PVE content has changed a lot over the years. Old content, like Naxxramus, Black rock mountain, league of explorers etc are mini expansions. They cost money but reward a lot of cards that aren‘t found in packs. All of those are in the wild Format though. Ignore them for now, you allways can come back later. Those adventures require you to have a big collection!!
Newer content is free to play but doesn’t reward any cards. Try out Dungeon runs, Monster Hunt and Boom Labs! They are great to learn the game and a ton of fun. It will probably take you some time to complete them all.
The newest adventures cost money again but reward packs aswell. The Price is above the pack value though! It‘s up to you if you want unlock the content. It‘s fun once in a while but all at once is a bit much...
5) Consider crafting whizbang the wonderful. He will be gone in april but he unlocks 18 different and semi powerfull decks at once! (You get a random deck each time you queue ladder)
Finally, have fun! HS is awesome and offers a lot to explore :)
Thanks a bunch for the detailed response mate! In response to the first point; I am pretty sure I will be steering clear of wild, and sticking to standard. At least for the forseeable future; no need to play at an extra disadvantage :D
Point well taken about the PVE content, I'll hold my horses on that. Maybe a few months down the road once I feel I have a nice collection. I'll also go for Whizbang the wonderful before April, seems like an interesting pick.
Most fingers have pointed to the 100 pack bundle so I think I will go for it. Hell, someone even recommended that pre-purchasing both bundles every 4 months can be a viable strat. Everything else can be acquired with gold. :O what do you think about that?
Pre-purchasing both does yield the highest value, and it feels like just the right number of cards once you've opened them (and bought a few more packs with your gold to hit the next legendary).
If you are a completionist, you will need to buy maybe one more bundle of 60 packs to get yourself pretty close to having the full set. (You may want to leave yourself a bit shy of complete, as you will be obtaining a few more packs as promos and prizes.)
"Why, you never expected justice from a company, did you? They have neither a soul to lose nor a body to kick." -- Lady Saba Holland
All very great tips above. In the mean time, you can theoretically "test" cards in most Tavern Brawls. Usually, they give you a deck to play with but sometimes they'll make you come with your own cards. It's a great way to kill time alongside battlegrounds which can be found along with arena under "modes"
I took a quick glance at your collection. There are a few nice cards but it looks pretty bleak honestly.
Now, I'm not sure if I understand you correctly, whether you actually want to get into the game long term and build a collection (or if you are a collector in any way). You just said that you understand how collection-building is more interesting for long term players, and that you want to play it regularly. I mean, you can play Hearthstone regularly just fine starting today, but it's quite different if you want to play it for 6 months or so, or the next couple years.
The thing is, if you care about playing short-term and have no interest in collecting, it makes more sense to aggressively disenchant cards that you have no need for, and instead craft those that you want. In that case, it would also make sense to avoid all older sets and focus on the new ones. It would also affect your purchasing strategy, because in that case, you can focus more on sets you want many cards from, and less on those that only have a few you'd just craft. Also, you'd have to spend significantly less.
If you care about playing it long term, than I personally would recomming building up a collection and NOT neglect Wild sets entirely. Of course, it all depends on how YOU want to play the game. But speaking from my own experience: Wild gets more interesting the longer you have played, and you'll appreciate having another mode with a different meta and more cards available to you, instead of being limited to your Standard collection. I tend to get attached to some cards, and I like to have the option to try out different things, or replay some decks I used to like, and I like to slowly fill out the blank spots in my collection. I'm glad I never disenchanted anything that dropped out of Standard or the meta, and that I can enjoy Wild mode just as much (oftentimes more) as Standard.
Anyway, about catching up:
If you want to get short-term good progression and build some strong decks, one good deck roughly costs something around 6000 dust nowadays. There are some that are cheaper, there are also a few budget decks that work reasonably well, and on the other hand we currently have quite a few competitive Standard decks that are closer to 10.000. You won't need to spend that much on every single deck, because there are overlaps and you'll also get (hopefully) quite a few good cards from you packs as well, but at roughly 90-100 dust on average per pack, you can expect that per deck, you require maybe 30-50 packs at least, if that's the strategy you want to go for. It oftentimes really depends on what legendaries you get and how many you have to craft.
If you go for the long-term collection-building route: As a rule of thumb, you should get about 80-100 packs per set to get all the commons, most of the rares, about half the epics and with some luck 6-8 legendaries (out of 23). In other words, that's roughly the baseline you should go for. If you purchase those amounts, you will have a good enough collection, though it's more than likely that you'd have to craft a few epics and legendaries that are still missing for some refined decks.
You can purchase that for Classic, Rise of Shadows, Saviors of Uldum, along with the 100 pack pre-order for Descent of Dragons to have a solid Standard collection, though you'll still be missing quite a few important cards fromst last year expansions, to play even semi-competitively in Standard until April.
Since you asked about the order of purchase: That's honestly a bit difficult to answer. While every set has its own theme and a unique keyword or mechanic, you'll end up using cards from all the sets available to you to make these themes and mechanics work. In terms of relevancy and "power" (as in: number of good cards per set), Witchwood and Rastakhan's Rumble are relatively unimportant, wheras Rise of Shadows and Boomsday project are sort of on the same level, and Saviors of Uldum is arguably a bit above that. I'd have to take a closer look at it, but Boomsday, Shadows and Uldum are the best sets right now. Classic isn't really THAT fundamental anymore. There are quite a few cards that are good to have, and that you'll find in decks all the time, but there are also very many that simply don't matter anymore or can be replaced with new cards. While I would say that Classic has some priority, I disagree that you NEED to have a lot of Classic cards just to start out. You also keep getting Classic packs from Tavern Brawls and some of the daily quests over time.
Now, most of what I said was about competitive playing and meta-relevancy, and I don't know if that's even your goal. And frankly, I'm not a fan of purchasing massive amounts of packs and start out with a nearly full collection, because to me, one aspect of Hearthstone is to slowly get there, to start out with nothing and improving your decks over time. It's, in my opinion at least, how the game should be to new players.
If there's one thing I'd really recommend, it's to enjoy the low rank experience instead of rushing it and getting into the competitive scene ASAP. Enjoy trying out sub-optimal cards and strategies against other new players who do the same. Find out what playstyle you like, what kind of strategy feels good to you, what effects you like using, have some fun with whatever new legendary you open in a pack etc. You'll soon enough get to the point where you'll find yourself in a highly competitive environment where only the best cards are worthwhile, and where "having fun" is sometimes strangely difficult. There's no need to rush it.
As it was already mentioned, the PvE stuff is great for (re-)learning the game, particularly Dungeon Run, Monster Hunt and the Boomsday Puzzles (Rumble Run slightly less so). You need no collection at all for it, it's free, you'll see and be able to try out many different cards from all the older sets, learn the keywords that were introduced over time, and get a good understanding of how to build decks and play strategically. Again, there's no need to rush. Just have fun.
Hey Dunscot, thanks for the detailed response. I've read it a couple of times to absorb everything. My thoughts (not in any order necessarily):
My understanding is that with the above strategy, I will still be pretty low ranked because my collection will mostly consist of cards from one xpac only. But it won't be "weak" by any means so I should be able to have fun, grabbing wins here and there, learning everything that this game has to offer.
Another question: is there a pack opening strategy I should be following? I know that the first 10 packs of any xpac definitely grant a legendary. Why do people stop after that? I understand the next legendary can take anywhere from 20-40 packs but is that the sole reason? In simpler words, I don't need to wait/hold on 10th December for anything i.e. I will simply open the 160 packs, correct?
I can absolutely understand you. It's no fun if you feel like you stand no chance. And generally speaking, I wouldn't tell you not to purchase anything. It will definitely help, and pre-order bundles offer a pretty good deal.
However, there are two things I'd want you to consider, again speaking from personal experience:
1) Choosing from 300 cards is more challenging than choosing from 50, if you can't tell what works and what doesn't. And for the time being, copying decklists (at least beyond basic lists) won't be an option for you, since your collection will be, as you said, mostly limited to one expansion. In other words, you absolutely need to get a basic understanding of deckbuildng to make use of whatever cards you get. Starting with basic cards and upgrading those decks step by step is, in my opinion, a good way to just have any starting point and getting familiar with strengths and weaknesses, giving you an idea in which direction you want to upgrade.
2) The quality of your cards (or your collection) is almost meaningless if you lack experience. One can't really replace the other, if you don't want to lose constantly. Maybe not to the point that you'd lose every single game with the best deck currently available, but probably still quite a few, even against much weaker decks. On the other hand, even with basic cards and a few minor upgrades (essentially what you have now), you should be able to win a few games and have some fun if you know what you are doing.
I say that to encourage you to try your luck with what you already have, and get some experience. Start building decks, start playing. The expansion comes out on the 10th, so you have some time before you get to open your packs. Even if you should lose more than you win, you will benefit from it. Also keep in mind that, due to the variance Hearthstone comes with, losing streaks can always happen.
I honestly don't know how rank 25 looks like these days. It is probably more demanding than it used to be, consdering that you'd have to play quite a bit to get from 50-25. In other words, the people you meet at 25 have probably already been playing for at least a month. I can only speculate what quality your deck should have at that level (though Casual mode might also be an alternative), but I'd be surprised if you have a completely miserable time.
Since we don't even know half the cards from the new expansion, nobody can tell you what you will be able to achieve with your packs, and how good or bad your decks would turn out to be. But I can say with some confidence, that packs alone won't be sufficient for you to win games. And while experience alone won't win you every game either (not even close), it is essential to stand a chance.
Depending on how much you play, you might get something around 2000+ Gold per month. The daily quests will grant you 50-60 per day, and I assume you will play a bit more, so on average perhaps 30-50 gold from wins per day, so maybe about 10.000 gold in four months. What you should purchase will depend primarily on what you want or what you are missing, and on what can be recommended by that point (since the meta will shift no doubt). There really is no way to tell you right now. Ask again in a month or two.
The "buy 10 from each set" is usually the advice thrown around for new players to get the most amount of legendaries/dust in the least amount of time/packs. In every set, you are guaranteed to get a legendary within the first 10 packs; a hard rule that was established about two years ago. However, 10 packs aren't really getting you much. As I said, 80-100 packs is what you should usually aim for to get most of the cards, and about 250-300 (I think) if you want a full set (more for Classic, since it is a much larger set).
Beyond the 10 packs, legendaries can take a while. Theoretically, you CAN open two legendaries within just 2 or 3 packs. You can even get two within one single pack. It's just very, very unlikely. Every set has an individual "counter" where a legendary is more likely to show up the more packs you have opened since the last one, with a close to 100% chance (officially denied, but large scale community research suggests as much) for a legendary to appear after 40 packs of no legendary.
In other words, it doesn't matter how many DoD packs you open, it will be a different counter for every other set. You can safely open the 160 packs, it won't have any impact on other packs you purchase. The only "strategy" you can follow is to ask yourself how many cards you want of a given set, and in case your last legendary has been about 20-30 packs ago in a specific set, you might want to buy a few more packs to get another legendary out of it.
don't spend money on classic set. just craft useful cards . there's not that many of them.
literally only 2 or 3 classic netural legendaries see play. a few epics and as for the other cards just craft them.
let's you want to play druid. starfall, nourish and wrath and power of the wild. 2 common and 2 rare. that's it. the same goes for other classes more or less.