Blizzard
We’d like to take a moment to discuss Battle Pet philosophies as they pertain to current nerfs, future buffs, and Master Trainers.
We like adding new Battle Pets in expansion packs with powerful abilities. Along with this, we generally “retire” pets that have seen many days of spotlight in both PvP and PvE. Recently you have seen this with the Bone Serpent and friends.
By doing so, we hope to keep both the PvE and PvP meta-games fresh, interesting, and involving player-driven strategies. We don’t intend to increase the level cap or rarity of pets, so this approach allows us to update both past and future content, unlocking new strategies for players that intend to collect them all. It’s analogous to Hearthstone moving some cards to Wild – it allows for the new expansion, and its abilities, to shine, without an ever-increasing power level for all pets that ultimately becomes unsustainable.
Ultimately, this empowers the player that has the largest collection – and this is what Pet Battles is all about. If you have a large stable, you will find that previously-underpowered things bubble up to the surface when other things sink, and your ability to collect them all will ultimately best allow you to weather the storm of change.
If you find that any older content becomes very difficult as a result of these changes, we’d like to hear from you – new combos should allow you to overcome older challenges, but we have a LOT of Trainers in WoW, so you never know when one may surprise you (or us).