Bonder

Description

A bonder is a particular support role of Protection/Smiting Monk or Elementalist. Instead of casting spells before or during battle, a bonder uses maintained enchantments to provide constant protection or damage to/through a tank at safe distance. Bonders often find a place in team builds for high level areas, such as elite missions or other Hard mode tasks, where damage reduction is essential. The most common Monk build in PvE, uses Life Barrier in conjunction with Life Bond. Elementalists use Protective Bond. In PvP, bonding is less effective because most organized teams will have a way to counter enchantments. Monk bonders dedicate to reduce damage / deal indirect damage and they are usually part of a team build that has another character responsible for healing. However, Elementalist bonders handle both damage reduction and healing at the same time via constant usage of Infuse Health.

Bonders face energy degeneration or zero regeneration due to the maintaining cost of each enchantment. When a bonder's energy drops to zero, enchantments that they are maintaining will be dismissed until energy regeneration has returned to 0. Monk bonders upkeep energy with Blessed Signet, often in combination with Balthazar's Spirit and/or Essence Bond. Elementalist bonders will make use of Ether Renewal along with spammable spells such as: Burning Speed, Infuse Health and Vigorous Spirit (which also work as cover enchantment).

Bonders are vulnerable to enchantment removal, which means it is vital to study enemies skills in a certain area beforehand since they might as well need several cover enchantments to keep the bonds protected (and quickly recast them if they were removed by foes).

Maintained enchantments have a large range, allowing their target to move further away but not unlimited. These spells cannot be kept beyond radar range. The Bonder will be notified with orange messages but the target needs to keep watch on their skill upkeep display bar.

Heroes

Since a Protection Bonder's build is almost passive, some players prefer heroes to fill that position and use high skilled players for other team functions. Team builds that use a tank should not make the same player to take the hero but another player instead, so that it won't follow the tank risking both lives. The tank would also need to constantly flag it, slowing down the entire team's advancing pace.

Hero bonders need to be micromanaged since their normal behavior causes them to immediately dismiss maintained enchantments outside of combat and require the owner to:

• Disable the hero's relevant skills for micromanagement.
• Manually target the character that the hero should bond.
• Manually activate the hero's skills, except those that are not maintained enchantments.

Primary bonder spells

The primary task of this build is to maintain three (or more) of these enchantments.

Icon	Name	Description						Attribute	Campaign
	Balthazar's Spirit	Enchantment Spell. Target ally gains adrenaline and 1 Energy when taking damage.	-1	1010	02.002	0		Smiting PrayersZ	Prophecies
	Life Barrier	Elite Enchantment Spell. Reduces damage by 20...44...50%. Cannot self-target. If your Health is below 50% when target takes damage, Life Barrier ends.	-1	1515	02.002	0055		Protection PrayersZ	Prophecies
	Life Bond	Enchantment Spell. Half of the damage target ally takes from attacks is redirected to you. Redirected damage is reduced by 3...25...30. Cannot self-target.	-1	1010	02.002	0		Protection PrayersZ	Core
	Protective Bond	Enchantment Spell. Target ally cannot lose more than 5% max Health from a single attack or spell. Each time damage is reduced you lose 6...4...3 Energy or this spell ends.	-1	1010	02.002	0		Protection PrayersZ	Prophecies

Less commonly, one of the following elites may be used instead:

• Offering of Blood
• Scribe's Insight

Additional skills

Bonder skills have high energy costs, requiring good energy management. The use of enchantments enables a few options for energy management.

primary Monks:

Bonds

• Divine Boon
• Essence Bond
• Holy Veil
• Life Attunement
• Mending
• Purifying Veil
• Retribution
• Strength of Honor
• Succor
• Unyielding Aura (elite)
• Vital Blessing
• Watchful Spirit

Healing

• Infuse Health
• Vigorous Spirit

Signets

• Blessed Signet
• Signet of Devotion
• Signet of Rejuvenation

primary Elementalists:

• Ether Renewal (elite): gain health and energy for each enchantment when casting a spell
• Aura of Restoration: gain health and energy when casting a spell
• Elemental Lord: gain health and energy when casting a spell

Party members of an orders character may bring additional skills that benefit from enchantments:

• Mystic Healing: heals enchanted party members
• Dwayna's Kiss: heals more for each enchantment
• Seed of Life: heals party members whenever bonder takes (or redirects) damage from enchanted allies.

Trivia

• In PvP, Life Bond Monks were very common in Random Arenas, although more recently it sees less use due to prevalent enchantment removals.
• Paragons began taking on the role of bonders in high-end PvP after the release of Nightfall. Angelic Bond behaved similarly to Life Bond without the energy degeneration or the vulnerability to enchantment removal or to Nature's Renewal. However, that elite has been since modified so that it is no longer sufficiently effective for bonders.

See also

• User:Foo/GoM

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