Mathematically, apparently buying golden packs is better conversion of gold to dust than regular packs. But because of the nature of legendaries and epics being the major source of dust in the golden case, if you have bad luck, golden will suck that much more.
It seems regular packs give you a better worst case return on gold, but golden packs are better on average?
Can anyone confirm this through experience? Any whales here that have done both?
FYI:
Official Drop Rates:
Generally speaking, buying packs straight out is the absolute worst way to get dust. You want bundles (such as the one you get for reaching Legend every season), or the mini sets (normal is 2k gold which can be easily farmed within a single season if you buy the premium battle pass).
That being said, if you’re plunking down for packs, there’s no reason not to go golden. Because let’s be honest: once you get your “perfect deck” built and have the rest of the cards you reasonably need, the only things left are to bank up for next set release, or start converting to golden anyway.
The question for F2P optimization isn’t on whether golden packs are good value for dust; it’s confirmed they are; the real question is completely different.
“Do I even have the gold to buy golden packs to get enough cards to play?”; you can’t just dust everything immediately; that’s also a bad method.
Hence the default advice is to start buying normal packs; only after you get at least all the rares you start getting goldens; it’s practical.
The minisets are terrible value for dusting the cards it has immediately; that’s especially true for the golden miniset; the true value of the miniset is completely irrelevant to direct dusting.
Its value is on “tutoring” all the cards it has 100% guaranteed; you have 0% need to craft any of them now; it’s why the golden miniset is one of the worst investments dust-wise.
The F2P game is mainly played on normal and golden packs without dusting immediately and the miniset is only there for its normal version to tutor the cards once.