I love SMN with a passion, but I'm probably not in a great position to give advice. I employ an unusual playstyle that any normal player is going to call sub-optimal but is frankly more fun for me. But that's one of the beauty points of this game. There's so much choice available.

If you have been gone for a very long time, grinding out job points by itself will contirbute significantly to the power of your summons- both by increasing attributes as well as dramatically lowering BP cooldown. Hopefully someone else notices this thread and can offer you gear advice. I'd give you mine but I'd probably get flamed for that lol.