How should I balance an Elemental Archon?

[Srasy]

I first looked at the 3.0 prestige class and thought well this isn't that bad and on a druid it doesn't advance wild shape or animal companion and loses casters levels...
The only problem I am having with it is that fire mephits have scorching ray on a 1 hour cool down so every boss fight I have to worry about 12d6+summonsed mephits scorching rays plus all the reflex saves for the breath weapon and since he is a druid he is summoning lots of hippogriff's which have ashbound and augment summoning on them... So he is just breaking the action economy and taking way to long on his turn...
Also he chose a fire elemental as a animal companion
and took the acf which allows him to turn into a ball of flame instead of wild shape...

I know I should nerf him somewhere so he isn't taken 10 minutes for a round of attack... But what really saddens me is that I suggested basically all of this and it makes me feel bad to nerf his character when I half made it...

I am thinking about banning Ashbound and his mephits and making his Animal companion a actual animal and make it stack with archon but give his companion the fire elemental template

Do you think this is fair? Do you have any better Ideas?
P.S. I know that the mephits will get worse at higher level but I plan to keep the players at level 6 making it E6 for awhile...

[RaviStrife]

Raw, elemental archon is an incredibly powerful class at level 6. The rest is just optimized druid...a seperate issue. In terms of handling it, keep in mind that they are renewable, but only can replace 1 per day. If you're truly concered about that zerg rush,, make sure they have enough of a challenge to eliminate one or two mephits prior to a showdown.
As is, he is bringing enough game to the table to handle the standard CRs solo. If you must houserule this, you could also tier how many mephits he gets- like getting 1 at first level, 2 at 3rd, and the final 3rd at 5.
Be careful how much rope you give an optimizer...they'll hang you with it while giggling.