I started the game using conjuration and had it leveled to 100 with all perks by level 20. At the time my Dreamora Lord dominated everything, so much so that I stopped pulling out any summons except on hard bosses.

I'm level 56 now and instead of avoiding summons because they make things to easy, I avoid them because they die faster than I can summon them.

So my question is; are summoned creatures summoned at a certain level, or are they summoned at the level you learned the spell, or is there another mechanic at work?

What I would really love is to have my summoned creatures be useful.

And just to be clear I have all of the thralls and they drop anytime an ancient dragon looks at them.