Duplicate protection for crafted mercs?

So a while ago I got enough coins to craft Baron Geddon, nice! I'm missing a couple of epics and legendaries, but when I opened a pack recently and saw the purple glow I got an alternative portrait for Geddon instead of a new epic. I now that they messed up with the duplicate protection for pre-orders and didn't account for the diamond portraits, but since my crafted Geddon is the base version this shouldn't happen? Or have I missed something?

I did not find the charts which explains it but basically chance to get an epic or legendary mercenary is different from chance to get an epic or legendary portrait.

But to make it short: mercenaries packs are really bad designed and basically feels opening them like being scammed by Activision-Blizzard

There's no official explanation about this. But from my experience, and from discussions the gist is that each pack slot has a chance to roll a merc, coin, or portrait. One slot will have higher chance to roll mercs more often.

If you have all the mercs of a given rarity, it'll roll either a portrait or coins. So had you not crafted geddon, chances are good you'll have gotten it from this pack :P

Quote From JackJimson

Hat made a good chart here.

A pack has 5 slots, Only 1 is a guaranteed merc. The other 4 do not follow the duplicate protection.

So chances are you high-rolled a Geddon skin in one of your 4 non-guaranteed slots. This also happened to me on when I got a Gruul skin when I was still missing epics.

 

That actually makes sense, if I had opened a rare portrait (as the guaranteed slot) in the same pack. I don't remember if I did or not, but I guess so. Thanks!