Quote Originally Posted by RandomPeasant View Post
It was. Casting summon monster as a combat tool was a waste of your time. Getting a Vrock or Greater Elemental on a 15th level battlefield was not something anyone particularly cared about. planar binding was broken, but that's because it let you summon things that were individually stronger than your entire party. Once again, you don't seem to have any real understanding of how 3e worked in practice or what the dynamics of play actually were.
It might have sucked in 3.5, but in Pathfinder summoning is really good. Your Vrock for example was moved down from SM8 to SM7, so now it's showing up on a CR 13 battlefield with the same to-hit it had before. Since CR 13 monsters have an average AC of 26, with Augment Summoning that means it hits on a 9 with all 5 of its attacks, and that's before things like flanking or its heroism buff come into play.

Even in 3.5, a force multiplier like a bard or the right battlefield control could make summons pretty handy.