Oh where to begin. Well my biggest gripe for smn is comparing to bst. I may make some bsts mad saying this, but it makes no sense to me why their pets can take more hits than avatars. Not raging so much, i know the score that we can use PDT gear for pets too (atleast some PDT gear) and we have super-short recasts compared to beastmasters. I just find it so strange that a sheep has more hp than titan. Also a recalculation for the auto-attack damage would be nice. I just feel like smn's pets need to be stronger across the board. I always look at pet jobs as two parts, the pet and the master.

Puppetmaster and the Automaton are fairly close in strength in relation to one another.
Dragoon is stronger than its wyvern for the most part.
Beastmaster is weaker than its pet.
Summoner is weaker than its pet by a large margin.

But when comparing the pets to eachother and the jobs to eachother for most considerations, i find it looking like this;
Drg is the strongest core pet job, weakest pet (argueably). Though in fairness drg is more of an honorary pet job.
Beastmaster is strong on its own with strongest pet.
Puppetmaster is stong on its own with an equally strong pet.
Summoner is weak on its own with a strong pet.

A Drg without a pet can fight very well. A Bst or a Pup without a pet can fight pretty well. But a summoner without a pet is like a silenced blackmage and can do little.

Just my rant but i feel that because summoners have so little strength on their own, their pets should stand out much more than they do and being otherworldly beings, should actually measure up more against vana'diel's native creatures rather than be outclassed largely by them.

Thats not to say all avatars must outclass bst pets 100% of the time, cause i find it reasonable for an adamatoise (Crude Raphie?) to stack up against Titan in taking some lumps. Just my gripe and i know its not 100% needed to make avatars into demigod pets, i know theres a degree of balance in ffxi already between pets in game. But thats my thoughts on the matter. On paper, it makes me scratch my head.