The whole Summoner "has been re-worked" is sad

[AdamFyi]

It changed because it's an entirely different spell with its own summon, not a reskin.

By that logic, a potency increase, name change, and animation change makes it an entirely different ability. Wat. ಠ_ಠ
The basic function of the abilities stay the same. One single-target, one AoE, one knockback, and one buff extension. The function pretty much stays the same between both pets. So, I'll retaliate by quoting what you said:

A reskin won't change mechanics or abilities. Will it change the look, animations, possibly do something g like switch fire stacks to ice stacks or something? Sure.

What it won't do is give you anything different. So let's say you got Shiva and reskinned summon 2 with her, you can bet you'll get the same functionality out of the egi that you would have if it was the default garuda.

Edit:

But in this idea I would have included signature abilities or themes per summon. I wouldn't expect that if I pulled leviathan in in place of say garuda that their main function would both be to simply extend dot durations. I'd expect garuda to do that while I'd expect leviathan to do something else.

What they're talking about now I'm not going g to hold my breath that it's anything more than an aesthetic change and nothing more. Which is selling the job short.

There is a good chance that glamouring over the pets will give them their own signature ability when used with Enkindle. However, it's still far too early to come to any conclusions. We barely have any information to go on as it is right now.