Many people suggested it in the past to just let bandages be used. There is already the trick to log into alts and heal them up then log back and continue. That is how everyone farmed them but it is not a fix… just additional steps.
I get the idea behind the design. They want us to use different pets against different enemies but nobody really has the pet pool to do so specially when let’s say all of the bosses in the pet dungeon are undead for example. You would want to use the exact same pets on every boss since those are strong agains them and part of the winning strategy. You can’t just use other pets when they are weak to the encounter.
Probably not going to be changed ever. A small part of the community cares about collecting pets anyway just recently started doing them and literally no reason not letting players use bandages.
Being able to switch to an alt and heal your pets up and then relog on your character in the pet dungeon sounds like an exploit, and not something that should be encouraged or allowed an easier way to achieve. And nope, I did not even know this was possible, you have just literally given me the way on how to complete every dungeon without defeats.
The reason bandages are not allowed is exactly because, as you say, we have to build a pool of many pets and use them all. Otherwise we would just need 3-4 pets from each type alone and recover after every battle. Yes, it is grindy to build a large enough roster of pets for the dungeons. In fact I’d say you need at least 50 all at level 25 and rare quality to be confident you won’t waste your time with a retreat (and even more for Blacrock Caverns!). But eventually you will get there. I am currently at 1035 pets at lvl25/rare.
I’d go to the other end and suggest that entering a pet battle dungeon should prevent any other character in your account from engaging in anything pet related (catching, levelling/upgrading, etc.) until the former character exits (victorious or not).
This is literally how it has always worked and how everyone farmed the pets so they won’t change this now.
I know and I literally said that. Nobody has that kind of pet pool. Are you for real? Seems like you have never been in any of these pet dungeons. Most of the fights are nearly impossible without specific strategies which all relies on beating multiple bosses with the same 3 pets. No other choices exist. It is not like you just swap over 3 random pets and kill the boss. You either have those 3 pets or you won’t kill the boss. Healing is mandatory in this place like it or not. For some type of bosses there are literally like 2 pets that are viable in the entire game.
As it being said. They should just remove the restriction of using bandages. It is pointless at this point.
I have completed all “vanilla” pet dungeons (Gnomeregan, Wailing Caverns, Stratholme, Blackrock Caverns) without using guides but simply trying to find the weaknesses in the AI. It’s definitely not easy, and it’s definitely a massive time sink, but not impossible. And as I mentioned, I have over 1000 pets at level 25 and rare status. First time I did them I had less.
As for the bosses with massive health pool, using Life Exchange is a viable tactic. And pets with shield + damage reflect are useful for multi-hit bosses (like the final boss in Gnomeregan).
I’ll go an entire different tangent. Instead of allowing bandages, they should either increase the level cap of pets to 30 or at least allow us to upgrade them to Epic quality, so that we can more easily bruteforce the dungeons and those horrible legendary-difficulty pets in Argus.