One would think they learned their mistakes on FFXI summoner, as an once main SMN on XI, I know the feel of devs not giving your job the attention it deserves.

FFXI SMN was a stressfull job with pikes in usefulness every ONE minute, and a MP management hell that made you look for even 1 more mp refresh per tick like it was water in the dessert.
Devs eventually gave you a skill to up the DD of summons, at the expense of more MP, or a party buff at the expense of damage (oh the memories of being the refresh diabolos balloon holder for the BLM party at Dynamis, seeing how everyone but you have fun)



They promised more avatars, everyone hyped, but then they turned out to be a 2hr skill... (later reduced to 1h but still) where they just appear, do their thing and went away, it was... not what SMNs expected when they promissed us more avatars (the ones we had followed you like egis), I stoped playing before the last expansion so I dunno if they (after more then 8 years) fixed the job.

I havent played SMN 3.0 or 4.0 but seeing the complains I think your SMN has an identity crisis, and devs must be afraid to cut some stuff and focus on other without turning SMN into a copy of other jobs. They should have focused on the pets, ditch basically everythin else and making SMN skills to aid the pets. Make it the master of area control and ranged positionals, skills to control pet movement more easily (instant teleport to one side, instant teleport to marker, AoE pet shields etc) make a SMN devoted to said Summons, and give the player survivability skills cuz they are gonna keep running, shorter cast times s it will be only commands to the pet and a sacrifice pet mechanic to instant raise and give a buff to the person raised (depending on the pet), or sacrifice pet to give group wide buffs so yu can time it when your pet is almost dying or something.