How did you rate pets?

[Gráinne]

When I first registered, I enthusiastically rated the Anubisath Idol a 5-star pet in Battle. Great! One down, seven hundred and .... oooh .... to go.

That's as far as I got. Occasionally, I go back in to look at ratings, and silently skulk away again.

I just made a list of pets that I use, and how often, and it occurred to me that this would be a good basis for another look at ratings. I am again faced with a list of Abyssius, Adder, Albino Chimaeraling, Albino River Calf (I have a chip on my shoulder about that one!), Albino Snake, Alpine Chipmunk, and on, and on, and on......

If an Idol and an MPD and an EPW are all 5s, what's a 3? an Elder Python? Empyreal Manafiend? is an Everbloom Peachick better or worse than an Ethereal Soul-Trader? does an Enchanted Lantern outrank an Enchanted Broom? Sea Gull vs Sea Pony?

Eeeeek! Nerd paralysis incoming!

I have actually used maybe 100 pets. Do I rate the other 600 at 1?

How did you do it? Or are you, like me, paralysed?

[Mykro9]

I am in a similar boat. I have a handful rated. Usefulness, looks, OP'ness in PvP, they all seem to have their merits in contributing to the ratings. I guess any pet I have in my 'favorites' list so they show up in my garrison should be a 5, I guess.
Every rat/roach/moth/wasp/rabbit/crab/.... that there are 15 of the same model, but 'oh, but THIS one is white with BROWN spots' BS should get a 1. Why Blizzard thought it was a good idea to repeat SOOOO many of the same pet with the exact same look/move set/breed is beyond me. The unique pets are awesome, even having 10 raptor hatchlings, or 8 dragon whelplings is okay, since at the time they were introduced, there was a unique way to get them. But coming into a new zone and going "yay, a new crab/rat/moth to add to the the bazillion I already have' gets old. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of pet models to choose from, why every zone has to have a rat or a moth is beyond me.

I wish they would have made it a goal to give each zone a 'must have' unique model to obtain, instead of the way it ended up. Granted, there are a few zones that are set up to have their own unique pet, but it is few and far between.

[Quintessence]

Rate pets for battling or appearance, or both?

I've made it a point to stay away from rating pets based on their battling ability. They're all probably useful in some capacity and in certain situations/strats, and since I'm no pet-theorycrafter I can't be bothered trying to figure out a rating for how useful each one is in general.

Instead, I've rated all of them based on appearance since that doesn't really depend on numbers or any sort of strategy -- it's purely opinion on how a pet looks/behaves. It's much easier for me lol.

[Vakeetah]

Been rating them from time to time, when I'm not doing anything else... Still got a ton of them to go, but apparently I'm a top rater *shrug*

I don't think I've given any a 5 yet, on either department... and similarly, none has really gone below 2. Looks is by far the easier thing to rate - although I'm concerned about bunnies, frogs, and other low-poly pets (which inevitably makes them look worse than newer ones) because with the legion rework they'd probably get a considerably higher appearance score. Oh well :p

As for battling... Mostly uniqueness and synergy in the skillset, and in the case of generic pets, slightly higher or lower score based on breed availability. Didn't give PvP much importance in this part of the rating (because the meta is awful and skews the results) and I refused to rate Undeads higher than normal because of their passive... even though I know that's a bit untrue

[Gráinne]

I'm talking about rating for battle, though the same problem arises with appearance. I don't mind grading on a curve, if I had formed a clear idea what the curve is.

Vakeetah, you must be a very tough rater if nothing gets a 5 from you! I'd give a 5 to my most-used 20 or 50 pets (or 100?) and work down from there.

I imagine the main product of this rating is the Top-20 list here, and the average scores run from 4.03 to 4.54 as I look at them today. (And what's Brightpaw doing on the list of top battlers?) There was once a nice post listing the top 10 rated pets in each family, in this thread http://www.warcraftpets.com/community/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10216&p=81724 but it seems to be gone now.

[Yazhi]

I rated pets based on their appearance, and also things that may have a small personal meaning to me. I wouldn't last very long trying to rate on a battle PoV because I don't do it often enough xD

[Paladance]

I'm quite reluctant to rating pets, indeed. In practice, a pet can be either useful and recognisable or "what's in the nether is this creature?", with a very few examples of the middle ground.
Note also that with more votes, a single one starts to contribute less -- so if I voted more, I wouldn't hestitate to give some extreme rating (okay, don't worry, I haven't given 1 to any yet ^^). It seems harsh but this reflects the real tendencies anyway.
The appearance criterium also discourages me with multiple examples of the same appearance, like these of frogs or Aquatic-type mammals of Pandaria.

Maybe you'd keep the scale, but display it in a less blurred way? No real idea here.

There should be also a way to measure the potential basing on pure math, not personal opinions, separately. Some mix of DPR (damage per round) and survivability indicators including multiple combinations. Probably Gráinne has already created a chart of some examples
I believe that Brightpaw can be seen as a one-time version of Iron Starlette against the flyers and some wilderness.