I just got done with Scholar yesterday morning an found it to be really really! bad class
(yes yes I know some of you will say I dont know what I am talking about I'm not 50 blah blah, irrelevant)
But honestly, it is so boring an mundane to play, I found it to be really very slow to kill, an Pet AI is so stupid even a Tory looks intelligent (an that is a really low bar). I dont really understand what it is that SE were trying to do with this class. Because it doesn't really have anything going for it.

So I moved on an did my Summoner quest yesterday afternoon, an I was really expecting big things here.....
Man was I wrong. The Ifrit pet is laughable to put it mildly. I dont understand why it is Yoshi etc played all these games to get inspiration when the FFXI Summoner was so well done an so powerful. Instead we end up with a shallow class that a chipmunk could excel at. There is no originality no diversity an god knows there is no power in the class. The pets look like telly tubies (size).

Why on earth they didn't do their research on real MMO's pre wow (wow had no pet classes to speak of) is beyond me. Take Daoc for instance
4 Pet classes, each one distinctly different from the other, VERY powerful
Animist...Able to cast endless streams of bombs that fly towards target an nuke it.Able to lay down a sea of up to 20 AOE shrooms (grounded pets)... Not to mention the power of the player himself with nukes dots aoe's etc...

Theurgalist(sp) Casts Goodyear blimp pets Earth, Air,Water?? cant remember, but he could jsut cast an endless stream of these pets that make a B-line for you an start nuking you/dotting/mezzing etc...Not to mention the player had roots mez, buffs an utility out the ear..

Hunter, Able to tame any "animal" had to be dog/wolf etc I think, from memory, he could find

There has another one that could mez root charm any mob in the game no matter what it was, but holding onto it was a challenge, The class was also a healer/nuker

Now this is just a bear outline of a real pet class, as my memory is nearly 10 years old ... But the point is, there is no power in the pet class, no diversity, an damn sure no "awe factor"... When I defeated Ifrit It was just another quest.. There no sense of having completed something tough. Or of having a new cool powerful pet that stood out.
It was just a floating telli tubbie far as I was concerned
There were so many MMO's where pets were original an so much fun to play, sadly it seems Yoshi didn't play those ..