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:
- Basic heroes: Valeera, Rexxar and Illidan (I assume all 10 will be present in the game mode).
- 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).
- 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:
| Horde | Alliance |
| Orc warrior | Human paladin |
| Troll shaman (Not technically a prediction, I know. Shush.) | Dwarf hunter |
| Forsaken warlock | Gnome rogue |
| Tauren druid | Night elf DH |
| Blood elf mage | Draenei priest |
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.
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