u/deftlift shared on Reddit a screenshot they took from their Battle.net beta client - while it's supposed to promote Second War Uther's Bundle, the picture portrays a very Rogue-ish Anduin.
You can tell for sure it's a Priest skin and not a Rogue one by the fact that you can see the Priest pack alongside the depicted character.
While this leak may contradict the order we datamined a while ago, we have no guarantee Anduin will be the next character to appear in the Book of Heroes solo adventure. The asset itself could be a placeholder and was accidentally pushed live briefly as campaigns were being created for their eventual release down the line. We'll have to wait and see which data ends up being added in the next major patch.
Tidbits of lore
Under the same thread, u/ArctikMARC suggested that this particular outfit could be explained by the fact that Anduin spent some time training with Valeera, from whom he inherited knowledge about the ways of Rogues. This would explain the daggers in the leaked picture. Here's a Wowpedia quote the further corroborates this explanation.
Quote From Wowpedia Although his archery and dagger throwing skills are superb, Anduin has no talent for martial training or handling heavy weapons, unlike his father. Despite this, Varian wants for him to become a warrior.
What do you think of this skin? Is this leak will happen to be genuine, I think this skin will be perfect for Thief Priest decks!
Comments
You'd rather play against rez?
Noooooooooo!
But if Avalon is wrong, then we force him to eat a shoe.
Man, at this pace by spring I won't have any shoes to walk into.
A rogue-ish Anduin may not look very priestly, but it is perfectly consistent with WoW lore and avoids the issue of needing to give us a literal baby Anduin skin (which I doubt there is much appetite for).
This is also a nice clue about how his BoH story will play out, without it getting stuck in the loop of: get kidnapped, get rescued, tell daddy to calm down. Given the context of HS, where Valeera is much more than the side character she has been in WoW, showing what those two got up two off-screen would make good sense.
All in all, it gets a big thumbs up from me :)
You might be on to something... Maybe Valeera or some SI agent gives him some training after he is rescued from Onyxia? So that he won't feel so helpless if he is attacked or abducted again?
Well Valeera was shown in a comic to be training him to throw knives and it is perfectly believable that such training continued when Valeera returned to Stormwind after helping defeat Cho'gall.
It's a shame the WoW team chose not to use her much until HS made her popular, so all this stuff is either implicit or mentioned off-hand way later. Chapter 11 of Before the Storm demonstrates their relationship the best, and makes it clear those two are extremely close friends and that Valeera helped Anduin a lot over the years.
Would not have known that ever as I stopped playing WoW since before Warlords and have never read any of the comics. Also, going through WoWpedia and others, no mention of this back story anywhere! Thanks!
If that's true, as soon as it gets released, this is going straight onto all my Priest decks.
(And all of my Rogue decks if I can manage to convince him.)
This is the best Anduin skin there is by far imo. I´d use it over any other 100% of the time. Me like :)
I have to be honest: this skin radiates vibes that any other Priest skin has ever had, and you can't just ignore that.
I'd say 1st place ex aequo with King Anduin, even though I think the 1k one is still a little bit better.