EO3 Wildling Tips

Hey y'all, so I ended up buckling and buying EO3 HD. I've played every single 3DS EO title, so I'm definitely getting used to a lot of the quirks in terms of balancing for the original titles. I just started the game with the following party:

Gladiator/Monk

Arbalist/Sovereign/Wildling

On paper, Wildling seemed really cool - I thought they would work similar to EO5's Rover (I was half-right). I'm sure Wildlings are great late-game for FOEs and bosses, but early game they seem to be TERRIBLE. Their whole gimmick seems to be based on summoning pets with HUGE TPs costs - and for what it's worth, the pets are pretty solid. However, unlike say the EO5's Rover, pets disappear when battle is over, and you can kiss that sweet TP goodbye if you didn't have time to dismiss it (which, wtf, costs 8 TP at lvl 1). I'm sorta regretting adding a Wildling to the team and not just getting another class like a Zodiac. Normal battles (at least for the first floor) are over within one or two turns, so basically it's just plain silly to bother trying to summon a pet only 'attempt' to dismiss it on turn two, if we even make it to turn two.

I don't mean to shit on this class, because it sounds strong late game, but it just seems so abysmal early on that I regret not getting almost any other class (even a farmer might be more helpful at this point in the game). Anyone got any tips on how to use this class properly, or is my party missing something important that I'd be better off just replacing it?