So why was Summoner advertised as a pet class

[Maye]

Problem with that is it doesn't really help.

Lets say I only want to use Garuda for Contagion, because that's all she's good for. It has a 60 second recast, so every 60 seconds I'll want to switch to Garuda, use Contagion, then switch back to Ifrit. So I'll want to switch twice every 60 seconds, while Swiftcast itself has a recast of 60 seconds... You also better hope you don't need to Resurrect anyone... You'll end up with periods where you have Garuda out when you really don't want to, and periods when you're stuck with Ifrit when you could use Contagion...

I suppose it's still possible, I'd really need to play Summoner more to figure it out though.

I really wanted Ifrit to do more damage than Garuda (at least outside of fights where Contagion + Bane are huge damage boosts) but all of my testing and parsing shows that Garuda just does more damage overall except in incredibly controlled environments. Even a fight without many hiccups for Ifrit (HM Titan for example) I found that even with a small amount of travel time Garuda did overall more damage. And this is before including the benefits from Contagion.