I played casuals and to lvl20 or so about six months. I had some 1k dust by then, and cards of course (and I could have dusted many no duplicates also to get more dust, but I have enough for now), that I added to my character decks one by one when I got something better.
The path to there was somewhat a frustration, but as I got better cards, decks, I won more often in casual games. The rated/ranked games even at lvl23 and so, usually face too strong decks to be but to a lvl20 grind, using the best decks one has.
Soon after that, I built a Hunter deck to the direction as recommended, e.g. at metastats.net (though the Druid deck try, as I had most of the cards it seems, was a complete loser with too many small minions without enough supports to make it to work; it seems to be number 1 deck at this time at the top level meta, but I am sure it is complete junk that never works for me even if it works for others when I don't get any taunts, any removal cards and overall draw the long shot wrong cards from the deck during the whole game, then it runs me over, as it is a fast deck). The Hearthpwn.com is a well known site and you will also see what decks the top players use in the next big competition if you follow the news or so there as they will give the deck list.
Hunter did the best even when I was just buying mostly expert packs with gold (and the 10 welcome packs that I bought with 5 e - after 20 or 30 packs one rarely gets a useful expert card, just getting dust), but it had some expansion packs' cards also. Plus a couple of strong finishers, as one needs to have something harder to remove in one way or the other if one is to finish the games with a win.
During times of the new expansion packs, one gets some free packs by logging in, like 11th this month. Different kind of promotions or so and one gets all kinds of things next to free, that helps in getting cards and dust. I got at least half of my dust like that.
I don't play Arena, and won't, but they just forced me to, so I played all regions and got 3 packs each, plus 3 more a day ago by logging on (6 total, about no useful cards though, but one legendary, and one might now get one after the 10th pack latest, from these new expansions, though the 1st Gods pack will have one legendary, that is worth getting as one gets 400 dust per legenday, and yes, I have many legendaries but haven't so far dusted any of them).
The top players don't seem to play Hunter, so I haven't made it fully a top deck, just to that direction (with a little more dust I could make it maybe near top level, needing to double some cards I have and see if that already close to covers it), but I might have it as one of my competitive decks in the future, like the 3rd or 4th deck, or even higher if it becomes more competitive in the future.
The good about Hunter, Mage, Warlock is that there is a shot at winning with them without superior decks, and this could stay so more likely than with other characters. But I don't have enough cards of them yet and not exactly sure how I should build the Warlock. They just do okay in casual games, needing a major upgrade of cards to make them top level, and not sure if they in the current or future meta will be among the top decks that one should rather be using.
Warrior, Pirate warrior and its variations, that I build to about a complete top deck, counting out just a couple of cards (at this time, and they are mostly not that much better than what I have instead), as I had a lot of the cards and the rest didn't cost me too much (e.g. my Hunter and Warrior builds cost me some 450 dust, to the top of the cards I already had).
Pirate warrior is a fast deck and is used also by top players (seems to be the top 4 even at this time, and even a bit better lower and medioum levels, it seems). It is not true that it is a brainless deck, as I had more trouble to play it IN than with Hunter. The most learning I needed with Priest, but it also became mainly routine with little experience.
Last edited by pucmo; 08-11-2017 at 09:30 PM.