Guild Wars 2

If Ritualist’s ever do have an appearance in Gw2 i had an idea for the mechanics of the spirits.

Spirits can be risen in target regions and are locked to that position. A few are offensive and others a defensive providing their benefits to a medium sized radius around them.(Increasable radius through traits). The player once having the spirits on the field can chant and sacrifice a selected spirit and teleport to its former position, causing an AoE burst around the destination point.

Now there are two ways spirits (or all utilities) could be used.

Method 1: Spirits could be used as the class skill, like the mesmers illusions; except, all spirits are the same for every player. as the spirits provide there benefits directly to player(’s), a meter grows, and when sections of the meter are filled a chant is ready to use for the already mentioned effects to happen upon sacrifice.
Optional: spirits can be sacrificed prematurely for weaker effect and a longer cool down for next chant.

Method 2: utilities could be connected to the class skills, and the spirits could just be a utility placed at your location (unless influenced by trait) and sacrificed in the class skill bar.

Method 2 would provide a ritualist with another unique twist to their class like with all classes. Only have the utility skills be on this class skill bar, no heal, no elite. This will shrink their versatility a bit. Also, so you can provide the ritualist with 2 weapon sets, make a similar casting meter for the class skills as the one mentioned in method one. Like a spirit purge or something where energy builds through the use of those utilities and other skills aswell, or possibly a distance from target style generation, the closer you are the more in contact you are with them and can use the utilities or efficiently.

Im gonna stop with saying that the ritualist has a place in gw2, the ashes, the spirits, the chants all fit in to the combat of gw2, or could if made right. Please consider using even a fraction of this suggestion if the design of a ritualist ever goes underway.