My history with Nexus so far has been a Druid, Conjurer, Ranger and Bard so I've gotten to be on all the different ends. The Ranger never was hero though and that is an important thing to note.

I mention that because it's rather difficult to tell when certain affects kick into affect because lower level bonding is not the same as bonding near or at Hero. With that said, I pity the folk saying it sucks when they never get to Hero. (If they get to hero and say that, then at least their opinion is more justified)

I'll try voice some thoughts because people don't know much on what a Bard gives. My assumption and speculation was that certain songs affect a bard more than others. One of those examples is their song of resistance and even though you can sing it for others, it doesn't seem to have the same resistance as it has on the bard who's singing it. I speculated that through the bond, the bondmate was treated with the same resistance. I also speculated that my songs of healing, etc had greater affect.

The thing that bugs me most about the bond is that some affects only carry over at the point of initializing the bond. After they wear off they don't transfer over the bond again. Some examples of this are with druids, protection from metal, etc (I also never saw armor of thorns carry over to the bondmate, so maybe that's changed since my druid). The same example is in conjurers with resist positive and resist negative... If I had them up and began the bond it would carry over, but after they wore off if I casted them again they wouldn't carry over. Always felt buggy, but never got a definitive response from the imms.

One of the other things I noticed when my bard bonded with a druid was the massive plus to mana regen and it probably was linked to the bonus they receive when in wilderness. A lot of those affects seem to be pretty subtle.

"I like Hello Kitty Island Adventure a lot more than this stuff. "
- Leopold 'Butters' Stotch