So what's wrong with Summoner?

[Nemekh]

I can summarize the issues with a single sentence:

SMN is the only job in the game that sometimes needs to do a triple weave just to avoid one of the many bugs with the pets.

I love the broken mess but the pets haven't been this bad in years.

To be fair, the triple weave isn't needed for every case and outright is only recommended for 2.48s or faster. Personally I've been preferring the single weave method as something much more reliable with the timing down at slower/base GCDs. It's all about ensuring enough delay after the FBT activation so that the first GCD registers by the Demi.

Bahamut had this problem too, but they fixed it with him. I've had a very old bug report that's been accepted on Phoenix's behaviour from the end of October 2019. It's 8 months later. If it's still an issue come 5.3 I'm going to be fairly disappointed.

Honestly pet gambits need a big overhaul in general. The Summon Order system is a bug riddled failure just as every iteration of pets has had its storied history of broken bugs and exploits.

[Kabooa]

Honestly pet gambits need a big overhaul in general. The Summon Order system is a bug riddled failure just as every iteration of pets has had its storied history of broken bugs and exploits.

I'll be surprised if Pets aren't just visual indicators by the time 6.0 rolls around. Keeping them as their own entities while effectively removing their presence on the field is a weird middle ground.

[CKNovel]

I'll be surprised if Pets aren't just visual indicators by the time 6.0 rolls around. Keeping them as their own entities while effectively removing their presence on the field is a weird middle ground.

I think it would be for the best.
Apart from Healing the lowest target, the SCH fairy doesn't do much of its own.
Apart from damaging, DRK/MCH pets doesn't do much and MCH's Queen can get stuck on platforms (Hello E4S), on top of that you can't commande them at all to change target and I'm sure they would keep punching for a good 3 seconds before actually switching.
SMN pet is the most interesting, but because its an entity that act on its own, it'll have to wait the end of its own action before executing the command.

Pets are badly designed since ARR and even on auto-mode, they're still bad.

The only """pets""" that is good is Ninja's shadow which is almost a visual indicators.
The only advantage of pets I can see right now is the possibility of placing them where you want.