Also, SweetCaroline appears to do better damage than Hermes.
So I would say there are mild stat improvements with the new pets.
But this is exactly the problem.. These are cloned pets with a stat buff. They don't do anything new- this is something that could have been done with having a peice of gear that says "pet: level 119" on it. The update doesn't address any pain points or issues with the job, all it does is replace two crappy pets with identical but less crappy versions.

This month's update is supposed to have additional BST adjustments, so we'll see if they do anything at all to make the job experience more pleasant.