That’s no fun. 
Unfortunately, while that’s bad luck, it’s not insanely unlikely to happen. Based on the posted odds, that would be the expected outcome 26.87% of the time (ignoring bonus roll for HOTM for simplicity).
Not buying gems is a reasonable decision — the odds of getting a hero you’re happy with are pretty low.
Obviously some people get wildly lucky…or wildly unlucky. But on the whole, the most likely outcome of any given Summons is a 3*, so it’s worth considering the odds on each Summons when deciding whether you want to spend money on gems.
You can be very successful at this game without spending. Training camp heroes aren’t as “shiny” as many of the Season 2 and HOTM, but plenty of players use them to good effect.
And SGG said recently in the AMA that they’re working on new versions of the training camp that may allow training some of the older HOTM as a way to allow more players a chance to get them — we’ll see how that develops in the coming months.
Since you joined the Forum recently, I’m not sure if you’ve read some of the popular threads about this already. (I know lots of people read the Forum for a while before deciding to make an account.)
If you haven’t seen these yet, they’re worth reading: