You can also buy any of the store pets for ~115k gold. Which is what I did. I’ve only paid real money for like 3 of the store pets (when they were on sell for $5 each, I used my monthly sub money instead, and just used a WoW Token for my game time, so essentially I still bought them with a WoW Token) and I have all of the store pets.
And honestly, the only Blizzard Store pet I’ve ever actively used is Blossoming Ancient (which as others stated has a direct counterpart in Broot), Mischief in the Gnomer Pet Dungeon, and Shadow when doing the Magic PvP Pet Brawler, which can be replaced with any Wisp Pet.
The initial round of store pets that I got were gifts from my niece and nephew at Christmas time. Out of all those pets, the only one I regularly use is Lil Rags. The others are mostly for visual effect.
But once they started adding the “charity” pets, it started to change a little. Argi was cute and all, but Mischief, Brightpaw, Shadow and Whomper were actually useful. They aren’t OP like TCS or the Hermit Crab, but they are useful.
However the PTW meme is ludicrous. There are many wild pets and drops from dungeons that are a lot more powerful than any of the store pets. Since they are unique, you won’t see any triple Brightpaw or Mischief teams. You will, however, see triple Nexus Whelpling, Frostfur Rat and the dreaded Bone Serpent teams.
I’d rather see any combination of store bought teams than any of that crap.