Ritual Sorcery, Should runners even bother with it? Options

[Azralon]

DISCLAIMER: I'm not talking about flavor-based reasons in the following. Character flavor can motivate absolutely anything, so we can accept that as a given.

I was building a magician last night, and it occurred to me that the following are all worth 40 BPs:

1) Sorcery group at 4.
2) Spellcasting at 6 and Counterspelling at 4.
3) Spellcasting and Counterspelling at 5.
4) Spellcasting at 4 and Counterspelling at 6.

Option #1 is the only one that includes Ritual Sorcery. The other three are basically for more "immediate use" magicians and could be chosen based on where you'd want to skew the guy's functionality. Having a higher Spellcasting is arguably more beneficial for a few reasons (not the least of which is the potential to know more spells right out of chargen).

That brings me to my point: Most shadowrunners are "immediate use" kinda people. 'Runners typically don't die in their sleep or between firefights; they usually kiss dirt in skirmishes. So it really seems like Ritual Sorcery doesn't come up often enough to warrant a heavy investment in it.

And yeah, it's nice to have the option to send out a spotter spirit while working your mojo from the comfort of your own sofa. It's just that usually there aren't enough PCs (of the same tradition!) in a group to make that much more beneficial than just physically showing up at the target's doorstep along with the rest of the party and just casting on the spot.

To be clear: Ritual Sorcery undoubtedly has its uses, but it seems that they don't come up very often and when they do there are still viable non-ritual options available.

Given how expensive (in BP and karma) it is to be a full magician, it seems that it's more efficient to never pick up the Sorcery skill group and instead just buy a point or two in Ritual Sorcery after chargen. Once you get the Specialization that applies most to your primary ritual use, you're pretty much done as far as I can tell.

Counterpoints?