people like this deserves to be shot

My 2 cents.
Yeah attacking the prot booner in RA is often a badly bad idea, if there is another soft target that is said: an ele or a mesmer.
Especially when Prot monks have CoP to remove their own cond/hexes, whereas other soft targets bring nothing like this to remove efficiently cond/hex removals. In addition, if you're unable to kill something even with one healer, then the damage output of your team is highly questionnable.
Exception goes with bonders. If you see a ennemy team with every character enchanted, then its monk is a bonder. Kill him first as he can't bond himself.

And effectively a monk is not needed in RA/CA, if you have a pure spiking build, the most efficient I know being a 4 ranger spike team or 3R +1 order necro (-But the order build is less effective in RA than the 4 R one, because the N will be targeted/interrupted/mana drained so he won't be able to do anything, whereas with the 4R there is no way to know who is who...) with Troll Unguent and Antidote signet/Plague sending-Mend from secondary prof) to prevent from nasty conditions.
The damage output from this kind of team cannot be overcame easily by a monk.
In fact, the monk is often the last one you target, as ennemy mesmers/eles can be a real threat if you let them do their job.

For the "deep tactics" of RA, well I must say that RA is different from GvG, for sure, and probably from Tombs (but I don't play often in I must say).
However, the average skill in RA being what it is, I must say that anyone that does GvG extensively and have a decent rank know how to deal in RA. In fact, to get used to a build, you practice it in TA, then in Unrated GvG, then you play it for "real".
For RA, rules are different. As there is a lot of randomness, you are forced to have a self efficient build (a way to heal, a way to remove conds/hexes, and a way to be sure to dish out your damage).
As soon as you go in TA, then you should make a team build instead of an association of self-efficient builds that don't support each other. That's the only way to win.

Well, if you don't want to understand the point I can't make you, but FWIW I didn't say or suggest that "anyone who has decent rank got it from IWAY or ranger spike".

Oddly enough I tend to see the most success in RA when players concentrate on killing the mesmers first. Although the monk does keep his team alive, it's important to note that not all monks are top notch and in 4v4's you will rarely find your monks carrying any type of useful degen mitigation or hex removal. If you bring the right skills you can outdamage a single monks efforts, unless he's some sort of game-breaking super monk, in which case you couldn't kill him anyway...

i often run around and try to disable the damage dealers first before going for the monk. throw dirt ftw! it's amazing how few people bring condition removals into RA (me included, but i don't have it unlocked). anyways, from my experience, there's often NO monks on either team, so i often go for eles, who are the easiest to interrupt.

i'll say this again (hopefully the last time): i don't have enough skills unlocked. i can't really interrupt too well with only two interrupts, and i can't do enough damage to spike. so what does that leave me with? being annoying, of course. until i unlock more skills, and until i work out a better build, i shall continue to be annoying. 'cause you know, that's the only option open to me.

and no, i'm not a griefer. i'm too nice to do that. i also try to be helpful. a strategically placed throw dirt and backfire can break the opposing team very quickly.

In my RA experience, gunning for the enemy monk first has been a recipe for disaster. Every damage dealer making a rush through the opposing line for the healer sitting in the back gives the enemy several seconds of free hits. Not to say that trying to take the healer out first isn't a sound strategy, because it is... just that in their hurry to accomplish that goal, a lot of people tend to be blind to the other three quarters of the opposing team. I've revised my RA strategy to go after soft damage-dealers first, and/or being a pain in the monk's neck if I'm playing my ranger.

Leavers annoy me just about as much as the next guy. I think RA represents an "exception to the rule" in Guild Wars - that is, that organised teamwork and pre-planned strategies that normally carry the day in most (if not all) other modes of play are both effectively thrown out the window in Random. There may be something to Numa's assertions about the differences between RA and organised PvP - some players can get caught up in a paradigm that certain team compositions are required for success (or guarantee failure), and their skill bars might reflect a degree of reliance upon organised teamwork. If the immediate conditions required for their build to be viable (usually a monk?) aren't there, they leave.

Being a Griefer myself, I can say alot on the subject. (One of my characters are called Griefer Ruling, and my pets are always called Griefer).

It is totally true that a support build sucks for RA when it is awesome in GvG/etc.

In RA, you gottabe prepared to 1) Be Attacked, there is no "backlines", and 2) Pull your weight in damages. if you dont directly damage in some way- your team is gimped completly due to dmg imbalance.

As for Griefing..It can be fun at times. People take RA way serious :\

Former Ruling: I agree (you dirty griefer ) I think the best build strategy for RA is to focus on making your character able to operate independently, and still be an effective team member (speaking in general terms). You can really only rely on yourself in random competition; if a player needs a monk, they're not going to be very competitive.