I Played SMN in Xi; their play style (ignoring subclasses) was a blast and should have been implemented *more*
That being said, I also played wow... I played a warlock and guess what that is... a DOT-summon class...
The Franchise (meaning everything under the label Final Fantasy) means the summons should be better then this weak/minimalist pet crap, I enjoy the SMN style.

I complain about the pets not being good representations for their Primals. They look atrocious, for starters. while Ifrit has the best look of the three graphically, they all fall short of what they should be! Hells, even the Elements look better (and I have on a few occasions wished we were an Elementalist Summoner instead, because honestly I think it would have looked better!) Summoners are a "pet" class by anyone in the franchise's expectations...and they're not in function.