"Summon the thing for one big attack" was basically how FFXI's SMN used to work.

For a very long time, it was a rather weak and unpopular job. It took a loooooot of work on the devs' part to amend that -- Blood Pact: Rage/Ward split, Alexander + Perfect Defense and Astral Conduit being three of the biggest additions I can remember that helped put them back on the map in today's FFXI, so to speak, but there were numerous others.

I think this game's devs are somewhat wary of retracing anything that even remotely resembles those steps in FFXI, to be honest.