Hearthpwn

Hemet Jungle Hunter is not useless, it has a lot of potential. I can see some really strong decks using it in the future. I'd also keep Voraxx if you happen to get him, he will be in rotation for the next 2 years (so at least 4 more full expansions) and could be great with the right buff cards.

The amount of people in Legend is a reflection of how many people are playing ladder. If you're in the top 0.5% of players, and you play enough games, you will reach Legend rank. With the release of Un'goro many more people are playing on ladder hence 0.5% of the playerbase is a much larger portion.

You can cannot discount rank floors either. Many players would not reach rank 5 without them so the pool of players in the upper echelon of the ranks is much larger. You only have to be in the top ~15-20% of players at ranks 1-5 to ascend to Legend so with many more players there you can expect more Legend ranked players. Especially towards the end of the season when the big pool of people at rank 5 helps push the better of them up to rank 4 and so on.

I played the deck around ranks 4-5 and unfortunately it's just not consistent enough. If you don't draw Hemet early enough you can't win. The few games I drew Hemet and managed to stabilise enough to play him on turn 6 followed by Marsh Queen on 7 were easy wins but if that didn't happen I literally didn't win another match. Even getting The Marsh Queen out on turn 5 had little impact because once your opponent has dealt with it there is no win condition left in the deck (and if you do draw Hemet after playing the Queen it's a dead draw, in a deck that draws very little).

The win con of Hemet followed by The Marsh Queen is great but I'm not sure this deck is the way to go about it.

Time to regain tempo with Backstab.

That's a lot of dust! It's not a bad thing to spend dust, it doesn't do anything sitting in your account. I like to keep a few thousand dust in hand in case there are suddenly some exciting new cards I want to use but there's no reason to keep 10k+ dust around like some people do.

I see more midrange Hunters and Murloc Paladins than anything else, anecdotally. I can't recall playing a single Exodia Mage recently and Quest Rogues/Silence Priests are very thin on the ground. Taunt Warrior is fairly common though, certainly much more common than Pirate.

Without the actual numbers your analysis is useless. Guessing you opened around 300 packs per expansion is meaningless.

If you open a large enough number of packs the expected dust value of each pack is ~90, which averages out at enough dust to craft a Legendary every 17-18 packs opened, regardless of dupes. That's quite significant number of craftable Legendaries when you open 100+ packs. OPs analysis is flawed.

Every deck needs win more cards, otherwise you allow your opponent the opportunity for comebacks.

Can you explain Snake Trap? I see the Knife Juggler synergy but that has always been a bit of a janky combo. I like the deck though, I'll give it a try when I get home tonight.

Sunkeeper Tarim is always going to be strong if you play Paladin.

Ranking up is easier when you play the odds rather than play for fun outcomes. Play a solid Midrange deck like Hunter or Paladin, play on curve aggression without trying to extract maximum value for for each and every card if its not possible (eg don't be afraid to use a Hunters Mark on a 2 health minion or play a Beast Master onto an empty board etc etc) and you'll win more than you lose and rank up. Don't get tilted when your opponent draws better than you - some games you are simply destined to lose - and keep going until you reach your desired rank.

Crackling Razormaw really makes Midrange Hunter what it is. A strong card on curve with a 1-drop and just as useful later to buff a beast on the board. Great card.

I was very wrong about The Marsh Queen, which I thought would be strong. I didn't factor in how much weakness having to waste your turn 1 and one of your cards on a do-nothing spell in a deck relying on 1 mana minions would be. I still reckon if the Hunter quest was a 1 mana minion instead of spell that it would be quite good (even just a 1/1).

Quest Rogue beats control, aggro beats quest Rogue, control beats aggro. Theoretically it will work out.