I dunno if the rewards are the same in arena since I never touch that mode (they probably are); but the rewards for playing duels are incredibly terrible. I already knew this, but I didn’t remember it to be that bad.
I wanted to farm some gold to get some of the old-school hero portraits, so I went to duels to get a little break from standard. I managed to win my 12 games on first run (omu is insane with deathrattles). I spent 150 gold and around 2:30/ 3 hours in total to get to the end. The queue times gets terribly long after 7-8 wins.
As a reward I got the spectacular prize of 250 gold, 1 rare and 2 packs (1 from FoL, 1 from Nathria). Like holy molly I knew the rewards would be underwhelming but that was something else. That’s like around 3 times the entry value. Couldn’t we please at least get like x5 the entry value for something that is not very easy to achieve? Sounds reasonable to me. I guess duels is just for fun. And mostly a gold skink 
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Considering that going 0-3 gets you a pack, there’s really only 50 gold per player going into the prize pool. You got 250 and two packs, one pack was guaranteed so that’s a profit of 250 and one pack off of a wager of 50 gold. You got 7x value.
I think what’s really going on here is that Duel queues suck and you are subconsciously thinking that you should be paid for having to wait through that.
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I have never once gotten a prize for playing duels and I play it every day. I have a rating of 4511 (casual) I FINALLY got my 12 win run last week and I didnt get anything for it. The mode is difficult enough so I wont touch Heroic Difficulty. Also there isnt a fee to play duels. SO I dont know what you are talking about. I think you mean Arena?
Heroic Duels is just Duels with Arena prizes. Costs Gold to enter.
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I don’t think it’s subconscious. I think he’s plainly saying that if to accomplish a run like that takes around 3 hours and an entry fee, that the reward should not be so blatantly underwhelming. I can understand that.
Maybe Blizzard should consider throwing some bots at those modes. 
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Please dont. Its already hard as it is with humans. AI bots would just ensure I NEVER get a single win ever. Its hard as it is to get the one win in 4 matches per run Ive been averaging. I wish they hadnt done anything to Paladin when it was reviving 2 minions and not 1, nor had they banned groovy cat. Those were the only reason I was able to get as far as 9 wins with paladin and my very first 12 win run with (any hero at all) Drek. Since those changes its back to 3 losses in a row, sometimes 1 win and then 3 losses.
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I didn’t even know you could still play duels. Huh.
This. Exact same rewards as Arena. Which means with RNG you can win a lot of games and end up with 150g and a bunch of packs/cards or 400g. I kind of wish the rewards weren’t RNG though, because I already own every card in the game so anything beyond gold is just dust (which I already have a lot of).
Humble Brags aside… I just took a stab at Heroic Duels. Got 1 win and 3 losses ina row. So nothing different from Casual, but I did get a pack and a common. Also now I have a rank of 299 in Heroic Duels. Woot. lol
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You can always look up nice decks to run online. I got my 12 wins with an Omu deck idea I found online. It also is a matter of luck to be honest, a lot is determined by the treasures you get. I got the treasure that sets the cost of your Hero Power to 1 and allows you to cast it twice. That one was bonkers in my deck because I got to reduce the cost of my big minions by 2 every turn.
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it makes sense the prize pool is limited. just look at Arena. a generally skilled player could play this mode infinitively. if it was too easy to get a lot of gold then nobody would ever pay for these modes anymore which is counter intuitive. Besides, what do you earn from playing ranked until a certain ceiling? there are more rewards in duels or arena in the short term
I dont have the cards that nearly every single netdeck uses. if its a rare or higher and isnt part of the core collection set, chances are I dont have it. I might get lucky in my bucket picks in a run and get some of them but in the initial 15 cards to pick, I usually on a netdeck only own the commons and might have 1 or 2 of the rares. but almost all the epics and legendary cards I dont have. One of many reasons I dont netdeck. But most functionally why, lol.
It’s not Rocket science.
People that do decent runs actually get more than they paid for.
The key point here is “they paid for”.
If you pay 150 Gold and get 2 packs you not only did profit but you did profit like crazy.
It would be around 133% of what you paid.
This isn’t a small number.
But since people paid really low even a high return appears like something small.
If anything blizzard should increase the entry bar to 500 gold maintaining the proportion of fee/reward so the runs get a little less boring with more on stake.
I just ran my first 2 heroic runs ever, i only got 1 pack and 1 common the first run, (1w:3L) and on second run (0w:3L) I got 35 dust and a pack. I didnt spend any gold as I had 18 tickets stockpiled for arena runs I never used. DIdnt know I could use them here. But even then I dont think I got 150 gold worth of prize from either run.
Your runs are bad.
As decent i talking about 50% winrate at minimal.
In other words atleast 3 wins.
And that bar should be set because otherwise the store itself would be pointless.
Also it’s important to tell that your 0 wins run got you 135 Gold worth of stuff.
For someone who basically did lose every single match a 15 gold penalty isn’t really a big deal.
How is a booster + 1 common = 135g? Or even 1 pack +35 dust =135g? I dont see how you math that out.
and Im well aware my runs are bad. My average run is 1w:3l, occasionally I get lucky and might have up to 4 or 5w:3l. but thats really rare.
but what are we talking about? Of rewards from duels?? The game is totally out of your control, it’s blizzard who control every aspect of hs, through an AI, nothing you do has full effect, we’re maybe on 10%, the number of wins in a heroic duel is set by the AI just buy entry, nothing you do will change what is established, everyone obviously knows that whoever pays is the favorite, but not even that much, because the AI does not allow excessive winning streaks, you are just inside a huge hamster wheel, obviously you who pay you are the hamsters hehe
Okay.
1 booster = 100 Gold
A booster has a average of 100 dust.
Average is not the most common value but the total value of many packs together divided by the number of packs
So it’s not crazy to suggest that
1 dust = 1 Gold.
The craft value of a common is 40 dust.
Not that anyone wants to craft they but it is.
Therefore:
A booster + a common = 140 Gold.
This is how you reach this value.
With that said it still kinda miserable to get a common card and i wish they got rid of those from rewards and just give the dust instead.
The dust you can collect together to craft something useful atleast.
hey I dont have all the commons of all the sets so Im happy to get anything. and if it’s a third copy of a card then it is just dust value.
Edit: I am aware my duels runs are bad. lol. I got my very first win ever as bomb warrior the other day when I was handheld tutorial style thru it by Goramier. I think it was Gor. Sorry if not! lol! I was handheld thru my 2nd match and got a 2nd win ever as bomb warrior. Then I was set off on my own and ultimately got 1 more win before ending the run at 3 wins. This is amazingly good progress for me, as I have NEVER won a single matchup against a bomb warrior ever, and every time Ive ever tried it myself I had NEVER gotten any wins at all. So a 3 win run was incredibly good run for me. I did think a lot of the cards i was told to pick were strange picks as a lot of them didnt even add armor in order to fuel the bomb making. And it Im sure it didnt help that I was missing i think 4 of the cards I was told to pick (legendary and epics and rares I didnt have). so we improvised. Also a lot of the choices I was told make turn by turn werent what I instinctively thought was the right choice either. a lot of them i thought were straight up wrong ones. But I cant argue with the results. lol