I appreciate the replies here and discussion in other places.
I probably should have prefaced my earlier post with a note that it was not intended to be a “here is a list of things changing in the next patch”. It was just some commentary on the state of pets, and how we got to where we are, and things we have to think about when doing pet related things.
We agree things can be better with pets. Many of us play classes with pets that are of vital importance to your DPS or just to do whatever content you want to be doing. We have planned improvement for pets and summoned units to work better in many places in the game. This takes engineering time, and is a complex system, and sometimes creates unintended problems. It’s not forgotten, it’s just a perpetual list of priorities that has to be worked on, and sometimes becomes too risky to put in a patch where it potentially disrupts things in a negative way compared to what is already there.
The comments above about pet specialization and pet family abilities are good. They were a bit lumped together in my reply above. Things can be made better, but I don’t want to promise any timelines or specific changes.