General bonder guide

Overview
Bonding is a Monk supportive role using Life Bond or Life Barrier and other Protection Prayers spells to reduce damage to the party and vital NPCs. The word bonding comes from the build's primary skill, Life Bond. Maintaining all the enchantments, will take most of the bonder's time, but it can still have some utility as well and drastically reduce the damage taken by the party.

Because you need to have Blessed Signet, which is tied to Divine Favor, to maintain more than 4 bonds, bonders are mostly primary Monks.

The term “bonder” can refer to any party member using maintained enchantments on party members, but this guide only covers the use of Protection Prayers.

Required skills
There are 3 basic skills for the Bonder:

1. Life Bond is cast and maintained on all other party members and redirects half the attack damage of the target to the Bonder instead, and reduces much or all of that redirected damage.

2. Balthazar's Spirit is cast and maintained on the Bonder and provides 1 energy every time the Bonder takes damage. Life Bond redirected damage counts, so the Bonder gets one energy every time any party member takes attack damage.

3. Blessed Signet provides the caster 3 energy for each maintained enchantment. With typically 7 maintained Life Bonds (one for each other party member) and Balthazar's Spirit maintained on the Bonder, Blessed Signet can provide the Bonder 8x3=24 energy. If you want to maintain more than 4 enchantments, you will have to add Mantra of Inscriptions to your skill bar. With high enough levels of Inspiration Magic, this can lead to a net gain of energy instead of just a reduction of loss.

Basic Strategy
The Bonder casts Balthazar's Spirit on him/herself and Life Bond on each party member, and casts Blessed Signet as often as it recharges. Once set, the bonder's job is to avoid death and keep casting Blessed Signet to maintain the bonds. Balthazar's Spirit should be one of the first four enchantments cast since you want it to be one of the one preserved in case you run out of energy.

The bonder should routinely start combat way behind the rest of the party to avoid initial aggro. When bonds are lost, the Bonder has to consult the maintained enchantment icons to determine who is not bonded, and recast any bonds that were lost. This can be easily seen by counting the number of downwards arrows on your energy bar.

It might be a good idea to have a high energy set for emergencies, because if your energy ever reaches zero, you lose all but the first four enchantments you cast. Remember that maintained enchantments have radar range, so don’t stray too far away from your party.

Elite skill
The elite skill Life Barrier can be substituted for Life Bond. If so, Balthazar's Spirit is not needed. Life Barrier doesn’t return any damage back to the bonder, which is good, but also its bad since the Bonder cannot use Balthazar's Spirit to acquire more energy. It also ends if you take damage while your health is below 50%. Both enchantments can be used on the same targets as well for drastic damage reduction. Life Barrier should always be applied first as this reduces the damage redirected to the bonder.

When choosing an elite, keep in mind that you won’t have a lot of energy to spend. Zealous Benediction, Signet of Removal and other low cost skills are all good choices.