Is The Signet of Spirits Ritualist Hero Really Worth Bringing?

Chaining Fall Back is the standard answer to this. Of course you can chain Fall Back without MMs and go even faster, but only MMs really have both the attribute points, bar space, energy and secondary slot available to easily integrate it without weakening them significantly. Also take off Death Nova, its bad (at the very least micro it so its disabled out of battle). If you read my post, you could see I have 2 at the very least sometimes 3 fall backs on my heroes. He's still going to be lagging behind relative to the rest of the team that has been running along with me. Also death nova adds too much to the bar to take it out. Without death nova, minions are only there for soaking and it's debatable if minions are even better than a defensive spirit rit in terms of damage mitigation. As you say, the alternative is to micro death nova. Now going back to my post, everything I said about the MM started with the quote "Without micro"

Theres 2 reasons why I don't micro death nova.

1. The obvious, I'm lazy
2. A more valid argument. If olias is not casting death nova out of battle, He is casting it only in battle and then starts to neglect his actual job of damage mitigation. In my Olias build, that mitigation comes from casting prot spells such as aegis, SoA and prot spirit.

For this and other reasons, I don't use an MM anymore unless I know theres enough corpses for him to cast AoTL and instantly get 11 minions.

If you read my post, you could see I have 2 at the very least sometimes 3 fall backs on my heroes. He's still going to be lagging behind relative to the rest of the team that has been running along with me. Also death nova adds too much to the bar to take it out. Without death nova, minions are only there for soaking and it's debatable if minions are even better than a defensive spirit rit in terms of damage mitigation. As you say, the alternative is to micro death nova. Now going back to my post, everything I said about the MM started with the quote "Without micro"

Theres 2 reasons why I don't micro death nova.

1. The obvious, I'm lazy
2. A more valid argument. If olias is not casting death nova out of battle, He is casting it only in battle and then starts to neglect his actual job of damage mitigation. In my Olias build, that mitigation comes from casting prot spells such as aegis, SoA and prot spirit.

For this and other reasons, I don't use an MM anymore unless I know theres enough corpses for him to cast AoTL and instantly get 11 minions. Death Nova is bad because:

1. Poor chance of success. Minion doesn't die, minion dies away from enemy, minion dies before DN hits. When I've tested it the failure rate is ~25% at the lowest.
2. Poor minion positioning. Minions are even worse than heroes at getting next to multiple enemies, in a large group its almost impossible since other minions take up so much space. That means DN does at max 120 damage in most cases - if you are lucky enough to get anything.
3. Long cast time. Bad for reasons you describe, MMs have so many other nice things to cast.
4. Poor targetting. Love when it gets put on an ally.

So we have a luck-based randomly activating single target 120 damage attack that takes 2 seconds to cast. May I remind that Discord is considered a bad skill at the same damage, 1s cast, with 0 luck around its activation, and is coordinate-able for spikes?

Take off death nova so that you can actually cast worthwhile spells, then put on OoU and run EBSoH yourself. Have 200 DPS from your minion army and laugh all the way to the bank. Personally I do 2 MMs with bone fiends, that gets you close to 600 DPS.

Death Nova is bad because:

1. Poor chance of success. Minion doesn't die, minion dies away from enemy, minion dies before DN hits. When I've tested it the failure rate is ~25% at the lowest.
2. Poor minion positioning. Minions are even worse than heroes at getting next to multiple enemies, in a large group its almost impossible since other minions take up so much space. That means DN does at max 120 damage in most cases - if you are lucky enough to get anything.
3. Long cast time. Bad for reasons you describe, MMs have so many other nice things to cast.
4. Poor targetting. Love when it gets put on an ally.

So we have a luck-based randomly activating single target 120 damage attack that takes 2 seconds to cast. May I remind that Discord is considered a bad skill at the same damage, 1s cast, with 0 luck around its activation, and is coordinate-able for spikes?

Take off death nova so that you can actually cast worthwhile spells, then put on OoU and run EBSoH yourself. Have 200 DPS from your minion army and laugh all the way to the bank. Personally I do 2 MMs with bone fiends, that gets you close to 600 DPS. You do 2 MM? one yourself or both heroes? I always thought that heroes didn't use OOU at all?

You do 2 MM? one yourself or both heroes? I always thought that heroes didn't use OOU at all? They use it quite often. Not smart enough to spam it on recharge as I would like (some micro helps), but they certainly use it. At between +350-600 damage per usage depending on what your minion setup is its hard to find a problem with the damage output.

An SoS hero provides Splinter and Arage for my melee at high spec which is my main reason for bringing it (3 spirits for MBaS is also very helpful). SoS just happens to be the best channeling elite for cleanup of what I miss, and I don't need it up right away. Even so, it recharges between groups most of the time. Bloodsong isn't actually a required skill, and I often drop it for something more useful. The melee buffs will be used on minions if you aren't in melee yourself, and they distribute the damage fairly well.

Most builds can benefit from a good SoS hero, which is why you see it so much. It's a very safe and proven option that can provide a lot of utility. A mesmer has advantages of course, but you only get three of them at most and you aren't going to need an ST rit in every area. you can have any number of any class as heroes due to merc slots. That is why 4-5 mesmer is superior to having an SoS unless you are in certain areas of the game where more defense is necessary, otherwise the mesmers eat everything up like candy with multitudes of armor ignoring damage.

You know, it's possible to run a Channeling Rit with something other than SoS as the elite. In areas where I can reliably group together a couple of foes (i.e, anywhere where Splinter and ARage aren't completely redundant, which is pretty much everywhere if you take a little effort to aggro) I just run RoJ instead. I'll be running someone with smites anyway for SoH so I might as well do it somewhere where I can fit in RoJ. You should try it in DoA... Splinter + ARage + RoJ + extra random AoEs from mesmers or whatever + Whirlwind Attack = instant mob kills. SoS really is just a filler elite a lot of the time.

PS: In case it wasn't obvious, I'm talking from a physical point of view. I've done RoJ/SoH when running 2 rits. Nice but does run out of energy fairly quickly.

I checked the wiki and came up empty. What hero trainer gives SoS? I even tried Balthazar rewards and he only offers the PvP version, which is a completely different skill. It's an elite skill. No trainer gives it, you have to Cap it. Unlocking the PvP version will also unlock the PvE version for your heroes though. It just shows up as its PvP version in any PvP outpost.