If you already own all the Mercenary Cards of the determined rarity, the reserved slot will choose a random Mercenary of the same rarity and grant a Mercenary Portrait you don’t yet own for that mercenary.
You then say this:
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Why would I ever want to pull base-Sylvanas - having already owned golden-Sylvanas - when I could have instead acquired one of the three I'm missing: Ragnaros, Malfurion Stormrage, or Gul'dan?
Thus, either Blizzard is straight up lying or you don't know how to read. It says IF YOU OWN ALL THE MERCENARY CARDS OF THE DETERMINED RARITY, meaning if you still need Ragnaros, Malfurion, whatever, then you clearly DO NOT OWN all of the mercenary cards of the determined rarity. And thus, the stuff about the portraits would not follow. None of this makes any sense.
Your pasted quote from the Blizzard post says:
You then say this:
Thus, either Blizzard is straight up lying or you don't know how to read. It says IF YOU OWN ALL THE MERCENARY CARDS OF THE DETERMINED RARITY, meaning if you still need Ragnaros, Malfurion, whatever, then you clearly DO NOT OWN all of the mercenary cards of the determined rarity. And thus, the stuff about the portraits would not follow. None of this makes any sense.