It is really difficult to get enough points to make a truly effective tamer when you add crafting. I like having spellweaving and magery on my tamer character. I suppose you could give up one slot and still have a good template, but I for me I would prefer a really powerful tamer. Use soulstones and you can have both--that is what a lot of us do. And yes, I used to have a tamer/blacksmith/miner/swords etc, and thought it was a poor choice. That was my very first character. By the way, you can collect the bods with just .1 of tailoring or blacksmithing, so if you used the soulstones, you could still keep getting low end bods while having all the taming skills on, and then switch and get the higher end bods and so on when you have the crafting skills on, and fill the bods then. That would work.
I do play on Siege as well, so I understand what you are asking.