We know we need one. SMN toolkit is just an Arcanist with Fester. While it's confirmed that we're getting new pets, what I fear most in the expansion is that these new pets still won't trump Garuda's utility, and will be shelved within a month.

Solution? One idea is to change SMN's to be more like DAoC's Theurgists. Theurgists didn't have a permanent pet, but could keep chain summoning elementals that would taunt, deal damage, or buff the party, as the situation required. It's a design for a pet-class that I've rarely seen replicated in MMO's.

We could still maintain our two primary pets that we share with Arcanists (ie. Titan/Garuda), but Square could then change the function of the Ifrit summon and every other summon we acquire from hereon (Leviathan, Phoenix, Golem, etc.) to be a temporary summon (that does not despawn Titan/Garuda) which deals damage or provides some raid utility. In that way, Ifrit would be a spell we add to our rotation, rather than a pet left unused.