Look at your crafting numbers and do the counting. Of course mercs is pay to win. The numbers show it. I haven’t spent any money on this. If you want too feel free but be ready to drop enough money on this computer game with zero re-sale value that could buy you a car. lol
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You could eventually farm out anything you want, if you just keep playing, so it is better than many gacha in that regard.
I would say the pay to win factor really comes in to play early on, before you get into farming, and when you only have a limited number of mercs to work with… Compare Diablo to Lady Anaconda, and it becomes VERY clear why Diablo has a noticable price tag on him.
Well, you cant spend money on it if you wanted to. Transaction errors if you try 
Then farm specifically Diablo, if you like him so much. There are several very strong rare mercenaries, which are easy to get. Use those to farm the ones you like the most. I already got Anduin (which was easy) and am at 400 coins for Malfurion. I’ll probably get Cairn after that. Full F2P btw.
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I disagree with the conclusion that the mode is pay to win. I’ve cleared all of normal and am working on heroic winterspring right now just using the core mercenaries (cariel, her dad, milhouse, tyrande, samuro, xyrella are the 6 I use and there are 2 others they hand to I’m not even using). The core team is very strong and the legendaries don’t seem that overpowering imo, just interesting options if you want to farm them and try different strategies with them not overly strong strategies.
I agree that Cariel - Samuro - Xyrella is a very strong core, although I somewhat disagree on the other three. At least you got a nice arcane combo going.
The problem with Winterspring heroic is the fire weakness, everything is so much easier if you got a fire hero, but those are (mostly!?) legendary.
Winterspring heroic is very very hard IMO, I think if I want to progress I have to high roll the right treasures. Those furbolgs get so many extra attacks and if they all randomly get assigned to 1 person even if it’s tanky cariel you lose a person.
Milhouse is probably as good a dps caster as you can ever get your hands on at least for a single slot disregarding synergy; I agree Tyrande has begun to wane a bit on heroic winterspring. Cariel’s dad is amazing in fact, he can redirect damage to him even ones that bypass taunt which has saved samuro or xyrella many times. I could see replacing Tyrande here and there but I do like the others quite a bit.
I buy food all the time, even if it has 0 re-sale value
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Maybe get a Job? 
Bru’kan is basically the same as Millhouse, just better and he uses nature instead of arcane, which gives you much better synergy options than Tyrande or Blinkfox. Even if you simply use Anaconda, which benefits double from nature damage and has a heal.
Just try Bru’kan out, he’s easy to farm from Barrens-4 or Felwood-6 and it only takes 100 coins.
Regarding Cornelius, I simply think he’s not doing enough on the team, but maybe I just play differently.
I’ve tried Brukan before, he’s not bad. I don’t think the synergy for him is amazing though. Anaconda might double dip from nature, but her baseline damage is low to begin with, her heals don’t benefit from nature damage, and her healing is below average unless she’s healing a beast. Lightning bolt is too slow to trigger Guff’s nature combo so you’d be required to use a 3rd person to make Guff combo off, and at that point you’re susceptible to any one of the 3 getting killed and losing any synergy.
Don’t underestimate Millhouse’s ability to end the battle suddenly with greater arcane missiles (take his treasure to make it target the lowest enemy). Brukan doesn’t have that instead having a nearly useless aoe ability (almost all aoe abilities are bad because you should be trying to focus fire things). I’ll repeat what I said before, Millhouse is as good a dps slot as you’ll find for one slot that doesn’t need synergy.
If you want a caster combo similar to xyrella/samuro, probably malfurion + guff is as good as it gets. Malfurion acts quickly enough to trigger guff’s nature combo and his status as a protector lets him check enemy fighters, not to mention entangling roots is an eyesore for anyone who relies on direct attacks. However he’s a legendary not offered for free so you’d have to work for him. I don’t have him in fact I just noticed he’s rocked me several times from the enemy’s side.
Millhouse has fast AoE and his scaling move hits way harder. Arcane Missiles is also a better pay off move than Chain Lightning. Tyrande is also a much better fighter than Anacondra is in general, so the synergy IS there.
Just use his second ability, that’s fast enough and provides meaningful utility.
Lightning Bolt is only really good if you can cast it a couple of times. I like Bru’kan, but I don’t think he’s necessarily just flat out better than running an Arcane comp. I think nature provides a lot more utility but Arcane provides way more damage.
its not pay to win because every single merc is grindable.
you can spam tasks and get loads of tokens.
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I get where you are coming from and I like Millhouse and arcane in general, but it is sadly worse than nature. Chain lightning is faster and deals more damage than arcane missile, since it hits 4 times and is (somewhat) targetable on top of that. There really is no contest.
The faster AoE for Millhouse is nice, but it does so little damage, that I rarely use it before some arcane damage scaling and then the missile is usually better, albeit slow. Do you really need two AoEs on the same merc? Muddy footing on the other hand is very powerful if used right. The additional +2 damage on the scaling move is not that impactful, since most of the damage comes from the scaling anyways. Personally I think Bru’kan and Millhouse are very close in powerlevel, with Bru’kan slightly ahead because of better payout and more flexibility.
The biggest problem of arcane is the lackluster synergies. Nature has two mercs who scale double(!) from nature damage, easily outdamaging Tyrande, as well as two powerful protectors in Malfurion and Thrall, the latter even has a nature AoE and is one of the best mercs overall. The arcane mercs on the other hand are rather bad, the best is Tyrande, but she hasn’t much going for her other than the damage, which just scales normally. And while I personally don’t like Guff, he has his uses. Anacondra looks weak on the first glance, but her damage output with nature scaling is insane and her healing fast and surprisingly powerful. That’s 4 valid synergy choices for nature, compared to only 1 for arcane.
Honestly though, even if Tyrande were nature, I wouldn’t put her on the team, she does less damage than Anacondra even without any scaling. Sure, Anacondra doesn’t only half the damage up front, but Tyrande’s damage ability is so slow, it doesn’t make a difference.
Well I’ve played a fair bit since, and honestly Blink Fox is actually a great merc. She only has one Arcane Skill, but it’s REALLY strong, and it’s immediate damage really without the need for too much scaling. Her second ability is also crazy for speed control which makes up big time for Tyrande & Millhouse being slow and sets up an immediate Elune’s Grace-Missiles combo because it resets all the cooldowns too.
My biggest regret now is I’ve hardly leveled up Salvo, which is super important for Blink Fox synergy stuff.
Also Wild Tyrande is good in a nature comp anyway and can actually act as a bridge for the two comps if that’s what somebody wants.
I think stacking nature damage like that is a bit greedy, but it DOES work pretty well in a lot of PvE encounters.
Also I don’t understand your last paragraph. Tyrande definitely does more damage upfront and has a wider variety of options for damage. And above all, she still has Elune’s Grace, which is a great skill. The speed difference sucks a bit, but half of Anacondra’s damage needs to wait for the end of the turn anyway. I don’t think Anacondra’s terrible, but I think Tyrande is overall more reliable unless you are hard committing to a full nature comp.
Tyrande requires a very specific sort of play pattern. Early on you use her as a combo activator and/or for her significant chip damage. She’s fairly beefy so she’s hard to focus down and she’s mostly only vulnerable to attacking mercs, so she’s easy to guard with a taunt.
Later, she’s still used as a combo activator, but then you really wanna combo her with Elune’s Grace. Either with a big Guff, Millhouse or Malfurion play.
Fully upgraded Tyrande does 18 damage at speed 7, nice damage actually, but very slow. Anacondra does 20 damage, half of that upfront at speed 5. With +6 damage (2 scaling moves) it’s 24 damage to 32.
Tyrande’s second ability is weaker. It does scale double with arcane damage, but it absolutely needs that, because the damage is rather poor. Plus it’s not targeted. There aren’t many situations where you would want to use that over the much better targeted damage. Her third ability is interesting and has some applications in PvE, but it is very hard to use correctly and way too slow for PvP.
On the other hand Anacondra has one of the most powerful single target heals in the game at speed 4. She also can equip to double the healing power by including herself. Granted her third ability is niche at best. Which makes Anacondra not great, but decent in nature comps, where she’s usually the weakest link. Still better than Tyrande.
I love Blinkfox, too, such an awesome character, I use it in an arcane comp for farming. But it is sadly way weaker than nature.
Bru’kan + Thrall + Anacronda >> Millhouse + Tyrande + Blinkfox
But don’t let that stop you from using those characters. It’s all about the fun, not the most power. Else everyone would use the same few chars and everything would be very boring.
I can’t say I understand blink fox fascination - if you’re into the speed meta, vardin and cairne are the top contenders and after that you sometimes see a lich king as a third speed controller. Blink fox just can’t compete against those; mana rune does absolutely nothing the turn it is cast. Are you guys just fascinated with it because its main nuke has the arcane tag?
You’re also overselling Anacondra - she can’t both have the double healing as well as 10 +10 nature’s bite damage, it’s one or the other. Without the poison equip, nature’s bite is a tepid 6 +6, and usually casting a healing spell isn’t the way to go in pvp, even if you could get the double healing off which you normally shouldn’t be able to as people would focus fire one person.
Tyrande’s nuke is definitely slow, but if you can somehow buff her speed or debuff enemy speed it’s better than anacondra’s nuke since anacondra’s second half always acts at end of turn so even if the dot would kill someone, they will guaranteed get their ability off.
It’s just a lot of fast upfront damage. And the fact that it’s nuke does big damage AND has the arcane tag helps. Rune is just good. Being able to spam cooldown abilities is amazing, and being able to spam them fast is even better.
These are two very different comps. I don’t have Thrall yet, though, so I’ll reserve judgement.
I think mainly a caster-caster-fighter opening is bad unless it’s a caster PvE encounter, and it’s more of a line up you leave on your bench in PvP. Which is where I think Millhouse shines anyway, Missiles is great for finishing off weak targets.
ehh I sort of doubt that. Many gacha games do either a (very) slow grind or time/content gated type thing.