correct me if I am wrong, but tamers have always been mixed with other skills, I can use a combo of pets that out damages my mage skill, its just that who is tankin? me? I think not.
I know something has to take the damage that I cannot, in the day we did not have super hard mobs, so we did not need super tanky dragons.
Anybody using a tamer should also be good with other skills, even with herding, you have room for something.
Any way, who just vets and does nothing else, if you mean the skill of controlling the pets, its not skill, but messed up AI, and got to love the pet balls that don't work anywhere you may need to use one.
I have pets with 600+ int that are as dumb as a box of rocks. So yes I got to be a better mage to make up for my pets horrible AI.
Way off topic, but a long time ago, my characters where hugely imbalanced, as of now, I make trade offs but all of them are quite effective.