I said that Fire Eles will seriously hurt an entire party, but they'll never finish the powerful ones off all by themselves. An Air Spiker will kill one member of the party, but the others will be intact. If a Fire Ele works with an Air Spiker, they will make short work of a given group.

The Monk-Ritualist relationship is similar: A Ritualist can keep an entire party constantly healed as far as AoE is concerned. It can't counter spikes so easily, though. For that you need a Monk that is capable of spike-healing.

I'm not saying that one is better than the other. They are just different. The reason Fire Eles don't dominate in PvP is that Monks have time to counter the area-wide health loss and intelligent groups are able to avoid the majority of the AoE by spreading out and/or simply moving away. Air Spikers are better in PvP because well-timed attacks can take a target down before the Monk has time to react.

Something tells me that this is not the whole story. Why would the Necromancers get out mastered at their own game? Surely there has to be something that will still make Necromancer the best Primary for a Minion Master. Necromancer's most popular build is MM, what role are necros going to play if ritualist takes their job?

Well its a tradeoff, is you minion master there to do damage or to act as a distraction. If the first is the case you'll want a Nec. SS and Battery necs are also still very popular. in PvP you see more blood spikes than Minion Factories

Getting back to the Ritualist vs Monks: I think that ritualist will augment the healing ouptut of team. Honestly who needs three monks in a GvG anyways? A ritualist has the AoE healing, and the sweet weapon spells to help out warriors. Combine that with a spirit or two for even more healing these guys will be in as high demand as monks for sure.

Exactly why I'm making a ritualist instead of assasin now

LoL well the Assassin has its own ups and downs. I have always gone for that kind of character in other games. That is why at first I go a Ranger because it was closest to a assassin like character, but now I have the real deal =D

I might make a Ri later on, but I am going for the Assassin first off.

After playing the Rit in the FPE and a bit of PvE and PvP this last couple of days I would say the Rit plays the role of backline protection for the squishys.

The pre-made Rit for pvp that I used last night for a couple of alliance battles seemed to be very well suited to backilne protection with 1 spirit to knockdown, 1 to keep the foe down a little longer, 1 to steal health and 1 giving constant damage to an enemy. But all the spirits only appear to attack 1 person at a time so they only really good for those times a warrior or an assassin get through to the back.

If only I could remember all the skills that I used during the FPE, all I can remember was that it was 1 of the premades and I changed about 3 skills and turned it into an assassin muncher

Another role the Rit could fill is Air Spiker assist with skills like Rupture soul

I need to unlock a load more skills before I use the Rit in PvP again

After playing my ritualist for about a week I've noticed that they tend to be almost neglected. With spirits being a staple on any skill bar, the long recharge times are killer. I know there are skills that help this out but I'm not that far along in the game yet. It seems as soon as I cast my spirits people move on and they are wasted. This could be my lack of experience with casting stationary buffs etc, but does anyone else feel left behind?

I made a Rt/R and it owns no joke!

not only recharge times provide this feeling...ever thought of how useless you'll be in PvP with those horrible casting times, ritualist is going to be an interupt ranger or interupt mesmers dream come true...