I was bored the other day and decided to try and come up with some leveling pet combos for the shadowlands trainers. I soon discovered how pointless it was because the xp awarded to pets is abysmal. Same for Zandalar/Kul Tiras, but Pandaria trainers still give nice amounts of xp. So what gives? If they are trying to discourage leveling pets off of trainers, do they just want us to use wild pets to gain experience?
It’s a trade-off.
Back in Legion, we complained bitterly about having to wait, possibly for weeks, for a particular Tamer to be up so we could finish our Family achievements. Because the battles were available only when the WQ was up.
So in BfA, and since then, the devs made all the battles available all the time - but removed the XP so that we couldn’t milk them for unlimited levelling.
The same thing happened with the Garrison battles; origanally, they all gave full Tamer XP, but the devs decided that an unlimited XP-generating machine like that was too rich.
Pandaria and Draenor Tamers can be done only once per day, so they kept their full XP.
Legion kept its rarity, and also its XP, making it the most reliable mechanism for levelling even now.
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Doesn’t the Garrison pay pretty well when Squirt visits?
Unlimited fights, a pet trainer to heal your pets, and double xp?
Yes, Squirt is still a great levelling resource - every 15 days.
But in WoD, all of the Garrison battles gave XP, and the devs removed that in Legion … I presume so that people wouldn’t be going back to the Garrison all the time. Except for Squirt, the one battle they left there as a levelling engine.
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I was afraid things had been changed! It’s good to find out they haven’t, Ty. 
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I think that the BfA/Shadowlands/Dragonflight trainers scale down to the level of your pets
also plays into the amount of xp you get for them.
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They do. At least, they scale to the level ofyour highest-level pet. So if you go in with a Level 1, Level 2, and Level 14, the opposing pets will be Level 14. So if you have a weak roster of 25, and you’re doing these WQ for Charms, your best bet is to go in with three Level 1s.
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I’ve been finding the 3 level 1’s strategy great against a 1 pet team where I have trouble winning with my 25’s. Otherwise has the disadvantage that it usually levels up one or more of your level 1’s and you can’t use them again for same kind of battle.
If you’re up against a 2 or 3 pet team, means equipping yourself a collection of level 1’s who have just the right abilities and starts getting tricky.
Yeah, Level 1s do have that disadvantage, but I don’t see Level 1s as a long-term strategy. They are useful for grabbing enough stones to get yourself a 25 or two (and ofc in DF we now have Lubbins as well) after which you can buy and/or level what you need.
But as for doing the WQ 25s, I made a series of strats with just 3 pets for all but one of the BfA battles (and you can swap in an alternate pet for that one) and Rosqo made a series of strats with just three pets for all the SL WQ (one is a bit RNG, so again swapping in a ringer for that one battle is advisable).
So you need only 6 25s for almost all of BfA and SL. Once you have that, you don’t need the Level 1s anymore.