Guild Wars 2

I would argue that as a ranger player, if the ai (pet/minion/illusions/spirit weapons/turrets) on their own, unsupported/unguided, manage to bring you down then it is your playstyle that needs to be looked at.

In the case of ranger, ranger + pet is not two separate entities, they are one. It is a core mechanic, and just like most what the ranger got, it is either a boon or a massive PITA.
Without proper management of the Ai, saidAi is worthless

Libertine Lush.1320:

Today’s previewed changes to Guardians’ Spirit Weapons continues ANet’s confounding and unrelenting embracement of passive gameplay and low skill-high reward mechanics (AI, powerful auto-attacks and passives). This design philosophy is particularly unwelcome in PVP.

You realize how AI-companions in RPGs work, right? How pets work in regards to combat especially?

• Pets have a specific, developer-selected efficiency.
• This means that if you play really bad, they “cushion” that. They give you an average amount of power regardless.
• However, this means that if play really good, they also cushion that. They still give you an average amount of power.

And that’s everything the stuff does. It’s not some arcane magic, it’s just individually overpowered and needs rebalancing in some cases, but the new spirit weapons seem rather fitting in that regard.

All AI-skills do is trade maximum and minimum power for more averaged-out power. That’s it. More reliable performance by removing part of the human factor, but the reliability costs you the peak performance along with the worst-case.

It’s a quite viable trade-off, to get back to the main point.
There’s nothing inherently bad about using pets in a RPG. Plenty players enjoy a pet-master playstyle, actually.