Summon? Ranged? RANGED SUMMONER?

If you want a ranged summoner build, why not make a wand/summoner instead of a bow/summoner? All of the wand passives are close to the Minion passives, so it's much easier to get those instead of going all the way into ranger territory for bow nodes.

Wandslinger/summoner works fine, all required nodes are nearby and you can even freely go dual-wield as your summons will cover you most of the time. Both shadow and a witch are good options.

Melee/summon is actually better then it seems, you have a lot of AoE nodes available so you can use reave or GS to attack from mid-range while summons keep targets in front of you. Enemies seem to focus equally on you and your pets and it really helps your survivability not being the only target. Templar is recommended for life version, witch or shadow for CI-GR-VP one.