Mercenaries and the bond
The Steamwheedle Consultant Agency hires out persistent party members. A mercenary is yours: it keeps its name, its looks, its role and spec, the gear you gave it and its bond, and it comes back every time you call it. This page explains the bond, the part of a mercenary that grows with use.
What the bond is
Every mercenary has a bond with you, from level 0 to level 10. It starts at 0 and only goes up. The level is shown in the Mercenaries window, next to the name and in the details of the mercenary.
A higher bond makes a mercenary sturdier and a better party member. It notices more of what happens around it, reacts sooner, and learns the tricks of the dungeon and raid fights that a stranger would stand and watch.
The bond belongs to the mercenary, not to you or to a group. It is kept when you dismiss the mercenary, log out, change its role or spec, or level up. A new mercenary starts again at 0, so keep the ones you like.
How the bond grows
A mercenary collects bond points while it works for you. The points are added up and the level is the highest one whose number of points has been reached.
| Source | Bond points |
|---|---|
| Time together | 1 point every 2 minutes while the mercenary is with you (30 points an hour). |
| Elite kills | 1 point each time the group kills an elite creature while the mercenary is with you. |
| Rare elite kills | 2 points. |
| Raid and world bosses | 8 points. |
Mercenaries stay out of battlegrounds, so a battleground gives no points. They grow in dungeons and raids and in the open world, and the points of fights count more than the minutes: the first bond levels come in one or two evenings of dungeons, the last ones take a long time of raiding.
The bond levels
Each level costs more points than the one before. Every level also gives +2% health, to +20% at level 10 (applied when the mercenary is called).
| Level | Points | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 0 | A mercenary that fights well but does not know you yet. It silences the casts of its own target some of the time (about 15% of the seconds), steps out of fire on the ground part of the time (about 20%), and already follows many raid fights that have a simple answer. |
| 1 | 30 | Starts to take the shields and wards off enemies. Takes the frenzy off a boss with Tranquilizing Shot (hunters), runs away from a Living Bomb and from the blink of Shazzrah, leaves Gri'lek's Avatar alone, and removes the Curse of the Darkmaster at once. |
| 2 | 100 | Silences the casts that matter anywhere near it, not only those of its own target. Steps out of Whirlwind and Inferno effects. Kills the healers and the adds of a boss first. Ranged mercenaries keep out of the reach of what some bosses do to everybody near them (the Ground Tremor of Roccor, the War Stomp of Magmus, the Psychic Scream of Gerstahn). Walks around the traps of the Rookery and keeps away from the quakes of Ouro. |
| 3 | 250 | Silences every cast it sees and drops its own cast to do so. Stops casting while it steps out of the fire. Hunters pull Sons of Hakkar and bait the charge of Jeklik. Casters pause for the Counterspell of Shazzrah. Dispels bans, fears and curses on others. Melee stand behind the bosses that hit the front. |
| 4 | 500 | Sees a spell that is about to put something on the ground and steps away before it lands. Ranged mercenaries and healers step out of area spells and out of cones, and healers also keep out of the reach of the boss effects that ranged mercenaries avoid from level 2. |
| 5 | 900 | The fights where a mercenary only reacted half the time (the gaze of Mandokir, the orb of Razorgore, the images and twin bosses of Ahn'Qiraj) now get an answer every time. |
| 6 | 1400 | Healers also pause for the Counterspell of Shazzrah. |
| 7 | 2000 | Melee mercenaries also step out of area spells and cones. The bosses that must die together are kept within 2% of each other's health. |
| 8 | 3000 | Reactions come faster and more reliably, and the step out of the fire is wider. |
| 9 | 4500 | The same, again. |
| 10 | 6500 | Silences about every cast it can reach and steps out of fire on the ground every time, with a wide margin. |
What grows with every level
- Health: +2% for every level.
- Silencing a cast: from 15% of the seconds at level 0 to about every cast at level 10 (it grows 8.5 points per level).
- Noticing fire and poison on the ground: from 20% at level 0 to every time at level 10 (it grows 8 points per level).
- Taking shields off enemies: starts at level 1 and grows like silencing.
- How far it steps out of the edge of the fire: about 0.3 yards further for every level.
Tips
- Keep a small group of mercenaries and use them. Points come from time together and from kills, so a mercenary that stays in the Agency never grows.
- Bosses and elites are worth much more than trash: a dungeon boss run builds the bond faster than the same hour of questing.
- Gear, role and spec do not matter for the bond. You can change them whenever you want.
- If a mercenary seems to ignore a mechanic, check its bond: below 3 it only silences what its own target casts, and below 5 it reacts to some mechanics only half of the time. The Help button of the Mercenaries window explains the rest.
- The list on this page is not a promise for every fight. A bond makes a mercenary better, it does not make a raid safe.
Last updated 2026-11-04. See also Systems and features and the latest changes.