I'm wondering what the deal is with these bonds we can form.  I see we get two main types; nice ones to put on our friends and horrible ones to put on our foes, and we can only maintain one bond at a time.

An example of a horrible one would be "Touch of Woe", I don't have a problem with these types of bonds, since they "do exactly what it says on the tin".  I pop it on stuff, and it does it's job!  Sure there might be a few line of sight issues that need to be worked out, and the range seems kinda dubious to me, but it works at least.

An example of a nice bond is "Kiss of Heaven", now this baffles me!  It states that I form a harmonious bond with an ally and heal a bunch of HPs over about a minute, sounds good huh?  Well it's not that simple it would seem, sometimes I pop this on an ally, and it comes right off, sometimes it will stay for 30 seconds, sometimes it will last almost to the whole minute.   What i want to know, is what am i doing to cancel it's effect?

I've tried doing nothing, I've tried doing lots.  I've tried only casting and not fighting, I've tried only fighting and not casting, heck, i think I've tried everything and I really can't figure out why sometimes it lasts for while, and sometimes for only a few seconds.

Right now it's not a problem, I've only one beneficial bond to worry about, and i can live without it I suppose.  But soon I'll get one that can replenish an ally's power, one that replenishes an ally's endurance, I'll even be able to enhance an ally's damage eventually, and when that time comes I'd really like to be able to understand the mechanics of this ability type.

Does anyone have any insights into what's going on with my bonds?

Atelic Sceadugenga

Yeah I noticed that the endurance drain was way less than the description suggested it should be, though I hadn't worked out how much less it was yet, to be honest I only used it a few times to start off, and then stopped since it made so little difference.

hmm, now I am having the same problem with Gift of Anguish ... are you certain it's not just a mechanic of our harmonious bonds that means thay might drop t any time? 

Either the higher level versions of the bonds work more effectively, or the bonds have been stealth fixed.  For the last two weeks or so I have been able to use bonds on all members of my group, and none of them drop.  I can also place bonds on enemies, and none of those drop either.

My test group consists of:

Necro (Used to drop when she hurt herself with Transmogrophy)
Dread Knight (Used to drop when she healed herself with an ability)
Blood Made (Used to drop when he hurt himself with... whatever that ability is they have that hurts them)
Enchanter (Used to drop when she used that blast that hurts her)

Also, in case some don't know, you can have multiple bonds up.  I don't know the extact numbers by level, but I know that at level 33 I can have Kiss of Heaven on the Enchanter, Gift of Anguish on the Dread Knight, Touch of the Ox on a mob, and Leech's Grasp on another.  I'm not sure if I could do even more or not.  It's simple that you cannot have more then one bond on a single target, or that bond used on more then one target.

-Atif

SYCK,

There are two sets of bonds, but you might not think of them as such.  There are Dissonant bonds, which are things like Leech's Grasp and Touch of Woe, and they are effects you put onto the mob which last 60 seconds and do something neat.  For instance, Leech's Grasp drains endurance from the mob and gives it to you, while Touch of Woe makes the mob take damage every time it attacks anyone, regardless of a hit or not.

There are also Harmonious Bonds, and a few include Kiss of Heaven and Gift of Anguish, which you place on group members (not yourself) and it gives them positive effects.  Kiss of Heaven gives the person a 60 second HoT which does heals for 1/10 it's total heal value every 6 seconds, and Gift of Anguish gives the person a 10% (higher at higher levels) damage bonus (I believe to melee only, but it doesn't say).

You can have only one instance of each bond, and only one bond per person/mob, so you have to think about how you want to use them.

I hope that helps you,

-Atif