That pets WERE meant to compliment veno's damage.
Don't you remember when all a veno had to do was go full HA and send the nix to bleed people? She didn't even had to land hits...So yeah, the venomancer is a very complicated class that has been abandoned for a very long time. It's time to bring the class back to life.
Compliment = support. A barb stacks HP to compliment his inherent tankiness. A wizard stacks damage to compliment his inherent high damage skills. An archer stacks crit to compliment their inherent high crit rate. An assassin gets GoF daggers to compliment their (well at least it's supposed to be) super-high 1v1 damage. A venomancer gets a pet to compliment her control and debuff skills.
And yes, I do remember those days. I also remember that those were the days when every BM and their grandfather spat on fists and jizzed over Calamity/HH90 Gold axes.