Mercenary character speculation

Speculation is always fun, so I couldn't resist doing a bit of sleuthing when I heard about the new 'mercenary' characters we'll be seeing. This thread is primarily about the characters that will appear as Legendary minions in constructed, but will involve a discussion about the characters appearing in the Mercenaries game mode to set out all the evidence.

By the sounds of each each class will have a mercenary character, with us currently knowing about the troll shaman Bru'kan. We don't yet know the other 9, but we do see that Bru'kan appears on Chain Lightning (Rank 1) (as well as the Rank 2 and 3 versions), which seems to be a quick and simple way to show the growth of the character from a low level scrub to a high level powerhouse worthy of a legendary card.

So these Rank cards likely give us clues about the other mercenaries. Currently the only other Rank card we know is Imp Swarm (Rank 1), which shows a female forsaken warlock. 2 down. 8 to go.

OK, so it's optimistic to say anything about all 10 at this point, but we actually know a surprising amount already: In the Barrens cinematic and the key art we see 5 prominent characters, two of which are Bru'kan and the forsaken warlock. It stands to reason then that the other 3 are also mercenaries, giving us a tauren druid, blood elf mage and orc warrior (presumably the Rokara mentioned in the Deep Dive).

That leaves 5 classes vacant, who I first assumed would also be seen in the Barrens expansion, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Here's where the Mercenaries game mode key art comes in. In it we see 3 categories of characters:

1. Basic heroes: Valeera, Rexxar and Illidan (I assume all 10 will be present in the game mode).
2. Other characters we are are already familiar with in HS: Rag, Eudora, and a baby King Krush in the top corner (at least I assume it is Krush based on the artwork titled King Krush 1 in the press kit https://blizzard.gamespress.com/Hearthstone-BlizzConline-Press-Kit).
3. Previously unknown characters, notably including Rokara and the tauren druid from the Barrens cinematic.

One of the 3 complete unknowns is a monkey (maybe a baby King Mukla?), who we can safely assume is NOT one of the class mercenaries. That leaves a human female with a hammer and a gnome with a fine set of facial hair, who I assume to be the paladin and rogue mercenaries respectively.

It doesn't look like we have any direct info on the hunter, priest or DH mercenaries yet, but we do still have 1 clue: so far the horde and alliance races have been represented exactly once (except goblins, sorry guys). I doubt we'll see a pandaren, so that gives us night elves, dwarves, draenei and worgen as options. Honestly, since the whole theme is very WoW Classic centric, I don't expect to see a worgen who, like goblins, joined in during Cataclysm. Yes, blood elves and draenei joined in after Classic too, but only a little bit, and they have to make up the numbers somehow.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and also assume they want the race-class combinations to mirror those seen in the WoW Classic cinematic, not least because they directly reference it in the Barrens cinematic with the tauren scattering dust(?) over a cliff overlooking a river, and with the forsaken consuming the life of surrounding grass to summon a demon. So that gives us a dwarf hunter. 

Obviously they cannot do night elf druid as per the WoW cinematic, but that's convenient because DHs can only be elves, so the night elf needs to be the DH anyway. Finally that leaves a draenei priest, which is about as fitting as you could ask for.

So, all in all, I predict we will have the mercenary race - class combinations of:

Along with this, I don't expect the 5 alliance classes to get a Rank spell this expansion.

This all falls flat on its face if the 2nd expansion isn't alliance focused, but everything points towards it (even the Year name) so I'm not too worried.

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Edit: from the Q&A it looks like the alliance mercenaries will be in the Barrens expansion, but otherwise the speculation remains intact.

Quote From anchorm4n

Nice one, thanks for the write up! Any chance Hunter gets the Night Elf? Sometimes I wish that class was on the evil side just for some more bad assery.

I can't contribute much, but maybe we can go a little deeper in detail. I think it is the Warlock mercenary that creates something like a portal in the cinematic, with a big entity looking out of it. Summoning Demons again would be a bit boring so shortly after Willow, so what could she be doing instead? You say she's a Forsaken, so do you think Resurrect Warlock could be a thing?

Re night elf hunter: that was my first thought as I normally picture n'elfs as druids and hunters. That remains perfectly possible, though it does seem less likely to me, mostly because the parallels with the WoW Classic cinematic are so strong. The dwarf hunter in the snow with his bear and rifle was the first character we saw in that cinematic, and perhaps the least likely to change as a result. 

As for hunter being on the evil side, does that mean you consider n'elfs to be evil? It's presumably not a wider horde=good, alliance=bad mentality else dwarf would count as evil too.

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Re the warlock summoning demons: sadly I think that class is doomed to forever take the boring approach of summoning demons whenever there's a cycle of cards/themes that allows it. Galakrond, the Wretched? Summons imps. Rafaam's Scheme? Summons imps. Even in the Boomsday Project when warlock was originally going to be mathematicians, we got boring old demonology instead. In the Barrens we already know warlock has suffered the same fate because what does Imp Swarm (Rank 1) do? It summons imps of course.

Looking at the forsaken in a broader context, I would not draw much of a link between them and resurrection. Yes they were resurrected themselves, but they don't do any resurrecting of their own unless they happen to be a class that resurrects normally (at which point the class matters, not the race). That assessment fits with the distribution of forsaken art/characters and resurrection in HS: for the most part they have nothing to do with each other, but Catrina Muerte does happen to be at the overlap.

There is a bit more hope that a forsaken character drives a deathrattle theme in warlock, but that association is a bit tenuous too as there's a whole lot of forsaken minions that don't have deathrattle.

I love this kind of posts and this one is pretty well constructed, well done!

I think that you are right with almost everything; as you said before, I think the 10 mercenaries will be released in this expansion.

I will focus on the Priest mercenary because I love to play Priest. I'm fine with a Draenei being the mercenary for Priest because it's a wonderful race and I've always loved how Draneis look. The only problem that I have here is that the devs said that they wanted to give Priest the Shadow archetype in the core set and in this expansion and the future ones.

I don't understand too much about Wow, but judging every Draenei card released in HS, I think that they are more Holy-related than Shadow-related, so the Priest mercenary would be a Holy Draenei, and it makes me a little bit sad because I want them to focus on the Shadow archetype they said they would implement in Priest and I think that a legendary for this archetype would be needed.

Do you think that there is a possibility of a Shadow-related Draenei Priest legendary? Or do you think that if Dranei is the mercenary race chosen for Priest, he/she will be 100% related to Holy? 

Quote From Thiavi

I love this kind of posts and this one is pretty well constructed, well done!

I think that you are right with almost everything; as you said before, I think the 10 mercenaries will be released in this expansion.

I will focus on the Priest mercenary because I love to play Priest. I'm fine with a Draenei being the mercenary for Priest because it's a wonderful race and I've always loved how Draneis look. The only problem that I have here is that the devs said that they wanted to give Priest the Shadow archetype in the core set and in this expansion and the future ones.

I don't understand too much about Wow, but judging every Draenei card released in HS, I think that they are more Holy-related than Shadow-related, so the Priest mercenary would be a Holy Draenei, and it makes me a little bit sad because I want them to focus on the Shadow archetype they said they would implement in Priest and I think that a legendary for this archetype would be needed.

Do you think that there is a possibility of a Shadow-related Draenei Priest legendary? Or do you think that if Dranei is the mercenary race chosen for Priest, he/she will be 100% related to Holy? 

There have been some shadow draenei in the past, most notably Auchenai Soulpriest, which holds the honour of having 2 cards that reference it in Auchenai Phantasm and Embrace the Shadow. So there is precedent for a shadow draenai character.

Since the mercenaries look to effectively be player characters in WoW, a shadow priest specialisation is perfectly possible since there's nothing stopping a player playing as a draenai shadow priest (I'm pretty sure).

I would also say that we have 2 legendaries per class for precisely this sort of reason. It allows them to print flashy cards supporting two very different archetypes. So even if the mercenary is holy, that doesn't stop the second legendary being shadow focused. 

BTW There’s also some art shown in a Mercenaries reveal confirming Vol'jin, Ragnaros and Gruul as Mercenaries

Quote From DestroyerR

BTW There’s also some art shown in a Mercenaries reveal confirming Vol'jin, Ragnaros and Gruul as Mercenaries

Sure, and the official press kit (https://blizzard.gamespress.com/Hearthstone-BlizzConline-Press-Kit) shows art for the 3 tiers of Gruul, King Krush, Rag and Sylvanas. Based on his stage 3 art, my money's on Krush having something to do with the adapt keyword, though what that translates to in the game mode I have no idea.

Using the same name to describe both those characters and the game mode is a bit annoying really. I know why they did it, but was it really so bad to use different names to avoid confusion and ambiguity?

The leaked legendaries show a human paladin and forsaken warlock so looks like those are probably the mercs like you said

Quote From AnAngryBadger

The leaked legendaries show a human paladin and forsaken warlock so looks like those are probably the mercs like you said

Yep. And I'm pretty sure the teaser zoomed in on a brown eye on the 20th March will be the rogue gnome.

I'm really just waiting on confirmation that Kurtrus Ashfallen is the DH merc before calling bingo on the whole thing :)