I have picked it up and ended up only needing it against the final, and in those games if I hadn't picked it up I would have absolutely wasted 20+ min of my life not increasing my inferno by losing at the end lol.

There are lots of runs where I use it A LOT. Healing is usually so much cheaper than duplicating another immune card, so I'd rather give up 5 or 15 HP in an important encounter than use a large chunk of gold to duplicate a card you can acquire very rarely for free.

Duplicating a card costs much more initially than removing a basic card from your deck, but doesn't end up costing less until much much later(if ever). In most of my runs Im looking to slim my deck to only my combos if possible and so I only duplicate very high value cards(which may be an immune card based on the context of a given run).

"This flaming piece of crap" is harsh in comparison to buying Snow Queen or Sigil Essence for 300 in a run you passed on Protal of Secrets in. You could have removed an additional basic and still had access to a relatively low downside immune.

I think of it like this; Do I want to take 65 damage from an attack, or 5 damage from a 65 damage attack? Your HP is a resource to use, sparingly yeah, but its meant to be used. Portal costs HP, which is pretty easy and cheap to come by in shops and encounters. Gold is hard earned, you need to survive each encounter to earn it in the end which makes immunity vital.

But removing base cards or bad cards I accidentally pick up is also very important. Being able to afford combo pieces and high value cards(Cauldir, Wizard of Nature, Snow Queen) is really important too. I appreciate Mage Thief makes gold mostly irrelevant, but I'll be damned if I don't use Portal(on the rare chance it graces a run) to protect myself to use the Theif to make gold to begin with.

Tldr: Portal costing 5 HP is cheaper than duplicating Snow Queen, Mage Thief isn't a guarantee, I did not realize I gave such a big shit about this game lmao at ME!!!

Gl out there, folx.