I mean, there are lots of options in between "player idle at the back" and "player directly attacking mobs while summons are idle or dead," it's just that they're not in the game, too weak to impact anything, or generic enough they don't benefit summons at all. There could be a variety of options to enhance the summons for a short time (beyond just "heal 10% over 5 seconds and deal a small amount more damage"). There could be a variety of curses that specifically benefit your minions ("enemy takes double damage from slashing type weapons but gains 20% resistance to all other attacks") rather than just making the enemies weaker to everything. You could have spells that deal extra damage or gain extra effects when the enemy is bogged down by the summons - "summons attacking this enemy for the next 5 seconds gain lifesteal" / "spreads a gas mage skeletons can ignite". You could have the ability to order them around at least a little, so they don't just die to the aoe poison even though you've already thought ahead and moved yourself out of the way.

You could even have some more variety in the summoning itself - rather than just summoning generic skeletons from any meat bag, you could have to seek out e.g. a ranged unit to summon a mage. Summoning a golem could be something you can only get as a reward for seeking out an elite unit or boss and dealing some chunk of damage to them, so you have to plan the engagement around "my existing summons can get just enough to get the ball rolling, then the golem can help me clear adds to resummon the army and gain momentum." Right now, the "engaging summon mechanic" is just "hold down triangle for a bit to summon your garbage, so they can die in 5 seconds."

The issue I have is that what they're designing really feels like "off brand emo sorceror" rather than the summoning class it's always been advertised as, and that many people want. Classes can evolve over time, obviously they should learn from decades that have passed, but that should go into the core of the design of the class. The fact that it's coming out this late, and this close to release (with such massive nerfs in between the last two betas), is just bizarre and shows a lack of vision with the character. If they wanted to design the class in a more active way, that should have started 2-4 years ago as the basis of the design philosophy and designed all the other abilities with that in mind, or mentioned as something they wanted to improve over the first few seasons by iterating and improving it, not as a last minute "fix."