Shop/drop/TGC/achievement pets in battle

[Rustfizzle]

Hello,
I have a question. I am not a serious collector, but I occassionally like to buy a pet or get an achievement.
However, I see next to none of those pets used in guides, apart from the now nerfed Graves maybe.
Are those pets good? I understand that the guides are often aimed at newcommers, and telling them to invest more than their time might demoralize them, but there is a lot of people like me, noobs who already have those pets, just don't know how to use them.

[Nagini]

Because achievement pets and store pets are hard/expensive to get, and certainly not in most collections, people that make guides often avoid using them. On top of that, some of them have movesets similar to easier pets, so those will be used more often.

Graves may no longer be super OP, but in petPvP, it is still a powerhouse, and you see alot of them. The blossoming ancient is a pet that is also useful in PvP, using sunny day + heal stall teams (not an option that will make you popular, but an option nonetheless) though the druid class hall has a similar pet now that is easier to obtain.
Overall it depends very much on individual pet how usefull it is, and what it is usefull for. Many PvE fights can be won just by countering the pets carried by the trainer. lil'KT, lil'XT and Ragnaros can all be very hardhitting to pets weak to them and can be usefull for that. Its also up to personal preference. Elemental+beast attacks is kind of a niche set of abilities, but I like using the cinder kitten in PvE fights just because its so adorable.

[Gráinne]

As Nagini says, guides use the most common pets that will get the job done, first because those are the pets that most people have, and then because the first people to complete a fight use their more familiar pets first, and then write their strats based on those.

A guide based on [pet]Stunted Direhorn[/pet], [pet]Spectral Tiger Cub[/pet], and [pet]Alterac Brew-Pup[/pet] would disappoint a lot of people.

A roster of maybe 15-30 pets is all you need to defeat any tamer anywhere, if you're not subject to constraints like having to carry a levelling pet, or no-healing between battles, so you will keep seeing the same names come up again and again.

Nothing stops you from making your own strategies, though! Many uncommon pets are very useful. [pet]Graves[/pet] is still a beast, and I bring out my [pet]Purple Puffer[/pet] every chance I get. If you want to give some of the less used of your pets an outing, just look for battles where they will shine.