Should I craft golden copies of the cards going to the Hall of Fame?

Question

Blizzard recently announced that some cards from the Classic set will go into what they call the Hall of Fame once the new expansion comes out. Cards in the Hall of Fame can't be used in Standard decks. These includes the following neutral cards:

-Sylvanas the Windrunner
-Ragnaros Firelord
-Azure Drake

and the following class cards:

-Power Overwhelming (Warlock)
-Conceal (Rogue)
-Ice Lance (Mage)

Blizzard will be offering a pretty substantial dust compensation to balance the loss of those cards. We will get a full dust refund (without having to disenchant) for each of those cards that we own, up to the number you can put in a deck (two for all except for Legendary, one for Legendary)

It is my understanding that they will consider Golden cards first.

Is it worth it then, if you don't already have them golden, to craft a golden copy of Sylvanas and Rag as well as two golden copies of all the other Hall of Fame cards?

Answer 1

It's been confirmed by Zeriyah, Heartstone's Community Manager, that Golden cards will get considered first:

If you own a regular Ragnaros and a golden Ragnaros, you will get full dust for just the golden version. For non-Legendaries, if you own two Golden copies of them, you'll receive dust for both of the Goldens.

Now, let's try to answer your question:

Is it worth it then, if you don't already have them golden, to craft a golden copy of Sylvanas and Rag as well as 2 golden copies of all the other Hall of Fame cards?

It all depends on your definition of "worth". If your final goal is to get all the golden cards and still get some dust, it's probably worth it. If you want to craft them to profit from the dust refund, then probably no.

Let's do some math, so you can evaluate for yourself (for sake of simplicity I'll consider you have all the cards in their non-golden version):

• if you do nothing you'll get 1600+1600+100*2+40*6=3640 dust when the Year of the Mammoth comes. Not bad for doing nothing!

• if you craft the golden versions, get the refund and then disenchant the golden cards, you'll spend 3200*2+800*2+400*6=10400 dust now, get the same amount of dust with the refund (so you're at 0 dust balance), then disenchant them for 1600*2+100*2+50*6=3700 dust, a whooping 60 dust more than doing nothing! Irony aside, you can get the same result just by crafting the golden commons and disenchanting them when the patch hits, so if you want this (marginal) profit and have 2400 dust set aside this is the way to go.

• if your aim instead is to upgrade the cards to golden with a discount and still get some dust later, you can craft the golden cards now, then disenchant the non-golden version after the patch. The calculations at the previous point still stand, while for disenchanting you'll get 400*2+20*2+5*6=870 dust. It's less than a quarter than what you'll get by doing nothing, but now your cards are all shiny and animated!

• obviously if you want both the cards' versions (and have 10400 dust burning a hole in your pocket), you could always craft the golden now, get the full refund after the patch and enjoy your new free golden cards!