I just put the 23rd level pet in the lineup I use when I out to capture my next pet. 2-3 pet battles and it’s leveled to 25.
The impending conversion of Shiny to Polished would explain why the rewards seem to be getting sparse. When I was in BfA, and doing mostly BfA content, I generally saw at least 1 blue stone per day. Sometimes, I got lucky, and there were two. Now it’s lucky if I see even one.
Yeah but… why bother? Then you never spend leveling stones.
That was my point. I have THOUSANDS of these things, when am I EVER going to spend them?? Also, statistically, leveling a pet to 25 is going to waste XP because you’re more than likely going to overcap the XP which would have taken you to lv26. Since we’re capped at 25, the extra XP is just … wasted. You’re better off NOT leveling a pet to 25, you should never go past 24.
The reality is I could probably stop leveling pets at lv21 and just finish them off with stones, but I wanted to start out being cautious.
So is the experience in just capturing a pet using 25s. They’re all 25th level, so they’re not going to gain experience.
Moot argument as many pet battles aren’t worth the time/ can’t be won without a full team.
I’m sure that’s slightly changed since the inclusion of scaling, but honestly… why bother? There are specific battles that expedite leveling, doing it for EVERY scenario just seems like somewhere between a self-torture and a waste of time.
But everyone plays different. I don’t care if people wantonly seek to play inefficiently, I just know that I don’t have the time for it. If they’re having fun, I certainly don’t care. 
So, let me see if I’ve got this straight. You and I are both going to out to capture pets. You use three 25th level rares. You catch your new pet. Yay you.
I choose to include a recently captured 23rd level pet among two 25th level pets when I go out to capture pets. When I catch my pet, my 23rd level pet has gained experience and is now a 24th level pet.
And I’m the one who’s playing inefficiently? Got it.
If you have thousands and thousands and thousands of level stones, which I assume is MOST of the people on this forum … then yes you are, ABSOLUTELY!
Especially when I outlined how I could probably forgo leveling pets at 21 and still be drowning in stones!!
If you don’t have a lot of Stones, then YOU ARE RIGHT! I’m not just talking down to you. This is all about STONES and how to efficiently use them. It’s not about leveling, per se.
Understand what I’m saying?
I do understand you. It’s just that I feel your argument is so fundamentally flawed. On the other hand, it’s not worth it. I don’t believe in telling people how to play.
For example, you believe in efficiency, supposedly. But aren’t you also the one who said that you will avoid buying pets in the Auction House if you can help it?
The Auction House is the most efficient way to acquire cageable pets in WoW.
So, let’s not pretend we’re all about efficiency. If you were, you’d be spending every spare copper you have in buying new pets.
And again, your argument makes no sense to me.
You said,
So, you and I are both out to capture some new pets in the Emerald Dream, for instance. You line up your three 25s, you go out and acquire two new capturable pets. Yay you.
I go out to capture those same two pets. But I line up two 25s and a recently acquired 23rd level pet that I captured at 25, but was demoted to 23 upon capture.
Both your set of pets and mine would be rewarded experience for being used in a pet battle. But in your case, 100% of the experience is wasted, because all your pets are maxed. In my case, at least my 23rd level pet acquired some experience.
Don’t you even understand? You fault me for wasting experience due to the surplus once my leveling pet reaches 25. But you’ve wasted more experience! We would both be awarded the same amount of experience, but in my case, it’s going toward leveling a pet. Yours is not because your pets are capped.
And I fail to see how I’m being so inefficient in this case. We’re both doing the same thing, taking probably about the same length of time. The difference is, my pet is actually leveling. Yours isn’t because yours are already capped!
A bit disappointing, the Pandaria Trainers do now reward Polished Pet Charms but still only 2 of them per battle.
Polished now stack to 5,000, I suspect Moused will be overjoyed 
I ended up with 2,606 of the new pet Charms with this convert of shiny ones too pet charms…
forget that, they should make everything pet related like an account-wide currency.
Bandages, stones, charms, etc.
They are account wide I store all my Pet charms on my Horde bank toon and my leveling stones and stones that turn pets rare on my alliance banker …I can mail that stuff back and forth…I think there is only one very rare drop blue stone that is not account wide …the purple ones use to be not account wide but are now…
LOL yes I am Chrummie…
I have reservations about that. Account-wide currency tends to mean that only one toon per account can do a certain task to gain that currency. Meaning that once all currency is account-wide, you’ll be going to do that Pet Battle that awards a blue stone only once per account, not once per toon.
If the current currency means that I can do world quests on every toon, I’ll keep the currency as is.
That said, I seem to have had a lot more shinies than I realized.
Doing some checking, looking like most Stones now stack higher except for the Battle-Training ones, the stones that add 2k XP to your pet. Also bandages still stack only to 250.
I don’t think the Devs are quite done with tampering this this system just yet.
Don’t get me wrong. I was very much against the schism that created the Shiny and the Polished Pet Charms. But in just looking at the dailies, I see that a person could easily be raking in hundreds of pet charms in a matter of days, just by quest hopping through the various expansions, especially if they’re doing this through multiple toons.
So, what are the Devs planning to keep us from drowning in Pet Charms? Will the pets suddenly start increasing in price and we’ll be seeing more of those pets that cost 10K, like we did in Shadowlands? (Which I never bought, by the way. I can afford it, but the pet isn’t anything particularly useful, and it’s hideous besides.) Or will the rewards start to dwindle and we’ll start seeing quests that reward six charms, as opposed to sixteen?
I’m still getting the bags with the usual assortment of junk and the chance at a blue stone.
The impression I’ve been getting is that the devs aren’t designing the pet-token system around people who have time to grind out tokens on multiple characters for eight hours a day, but instead around the casual player. The end result is that there will indeed be a few people that ultra-grind pet tokens or use the phone app to do missions on a dozen characters a day. It may lower the AH prices on some of the pets over time, but is that a bad thing? They already have a 5K token pet in Dragonflight so I don’t think they’ll be increasing them more. I for one love that I’ve reclaimed like three bag slots and welcome this change.
Arghh, danger of posting a comment in the morning before my first cup of coffee. You’re absolutely right, I meant the Draenor trainers circuit, not the Pandaria one. Thanks.
Haha it’s cool. Your comment sent me into a panic, though, because I use the Pandaria circuit to level my alts and pets at the same time (nearly all can be battled with a L1 carry pet). Any changes to that circuit would make me sad. And I like the magical pet biscuits. They suck, which is why I would never buy them, but it’s nice I get a steady stream of them from Pandaria trainers for free.
I’d prefer the stones, pets, biscuits to a measly two charms per battle any day.
Another nice thing, too, is that now all Pet Dungeons award polished. And of course, the Garrison dailies.
And while I certainly am glad that the Shinies are gone, I also noted that it makes no sense for the Menagerie attendant (Lio the Lioness, in case of the Alliance) to send us out on quests that award Shinies, but everything she carries charges Polished.