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This past weekend, I participated in a combat-focused playtest with a 5th level angel summoner. The playtest consisted of four PCs - a sustaining steel magus, a poisoner rogue, and the 5th level Valeros pregen - and spanned four encounters of increasing difficulty (at least, in theory; didn't actually turn out that way). We faced off against, in order: two frost trolls, two winter wolves, two ice golems, and two young white dragons (one spellcaster, one not). We were assumed to have enough skill-based healing to get back to full hp between each fight.
My build was a hillock halfling with the field medic background and the medic archetype. He was trained in the halfling sling staff for use in extremis, but the sling staff was mostly there as a vehicle for the eidolon to get potency runes. I chose the medic archetype because I wanted to try out a summoner-as-healer concept, given that I was already using the divine spell list; in addition to heal and restoration, my repertoire included heroism and searing light. Literally, the only non-focus spell I cast throughout the entire test was heal. Didn't even cast a non-focus cantrip.
I took the medic archetype because I knew that I wouldn't have the spell resources to heal from magic alone, and by Sarenrae I was on the money there. In fact, without the master Medicine ability from Medic Dedication, I was pretty much tapped for magic and skill-based healing both by the end of the third encounter. It's worth noting, in fact, that I spent both of my class feats on the archetype, partly because medic is really good and partly because there just wasn't much up through 4th level that interested me.
For the most part, the eidolon was extremely effective at its job of making the bad guys' hit points go down. My accuracy was solid, and every hit counted; boost eidolon pushes the damage floor up so far that any hit counts, even off of a d4 weapon. According to the notes we took, the eidolon actually did the most damage across all four fights, even eclipsing the fighter, albeit not by much. It's not hard to put out a ton of damage when even your weak agile attacks have a floor of 11 damage, and your heavy d8 ones can max out at 25 without critting. (As 75% of the enemies we faced were evil, the angel's good damage did not go to waste in the slightest.)
The struggle of the action economy is real. At least once in each fight but the first, there was at least one turn where I simply could not afford the actions to have the eidolon attack because I had to cast a spell or lose a party member. In one fight, in fact, there were two such turns in a row - although technically I could have given the eidolon an action on the second of those turns, but only to walk up next to a bad guy and stand there, waiting to get hit. I opted not to do that.
The shared hp wasn't the issue I was afraid it would be. I'm not sure how much of that was the fact that I did have a lot of healing available to me - and used it on myself when I needed to! - how much was the GM not focusing on me the way I kind of expecting, and how much that I did prioritize hp quite a lot in my build. I think I had the highest hp total in the group? (Valeros doesn't have Toughness.) The eidolon did take some hits, but I guess between the fighter's more-frequent crits and the magus dropping produce flame against fire-weak enemies, I wasn't generating the aggro I might have been. YMMV, without question.
All in all, the experience was better than I was afraid of, but it was definitely frustrating in both character building and action economy. Class feats that are more attractive and perhaps some way for the eidolon to do something when spellcasting has to take priority, kind of how mature animal companions can Stride or Strike even without a command, would be the biggest items on my wish list at this point.
Glad to see I'm not a complete outlier - it sounds like your experience was roughly on par with mine at level 6 with an Angel eidolon.
I did go the route though of taking Magical Evolution (for Shield and... something else, mostly Shield) and Reinforce Eidolon though, as my Summoner was probably going to be as tough/tougher than the rest of my party. I was tied for the highest hitpoints and armor, and being able to get an extra 10HP from Shield a fight and the extra resistance/AC from stacking both of those was nice, even if it cost two actions.
I didn't prioritize Boost Eidolon or DPS particularly, as the rest of my party had that covered so I'm glad to hear you had good experience there.
On your last comment about action economy - are you considering/have you considered the proposed fix from Mark where Act Together could be a 1-3 action, allowing you to cast and for your Eidolon to still benefit, and whether that addresses that concern?
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On your last comment about action economy - are you considering/have you considered the proposed fix from Mark where Act Together could be a 1-3 action, allowing you to cast and for your Eidolon to still benefit, and whether that addresses that concern?
I wasn't because I hadn't seen it yet; now that I have, though, it would definitely fit the bill.