Protective Bond

Enchantment Spell. While you maintain this enchantment, target ally cannot lose more than 5% max Health due to damage from a single attack or spell. When Protective Bond prevents damage, you lose 6...4...3 Energy or the spell ends.

Protective Bond

• -1
• 10
• 2

Profession

Monk

Attribute

Protection Prayers

Type

Enchantment spell

Campaign

Prophecies

Enchantment Spell. While you maintain this enchantment, target ally cannot lose more than 5% max Health due to damage from a single attack or spell. When Protective Bond prevents damage, you lose 6...4...3 Energy or the spell ends.

Concise description

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.

Progression
Protection Prayers Energy loss	0 6 1 6 2 6 3 5 4 5 5 5 6 5 7 5 8 4 9 4 10 4 11 4 12 4 13 3 14 3 15 3 16 3 17 3 18 2 19 2 20 2 21 2

Acquisition

Skill trainers

• Avena (Maguuma Stade)
• Tengsao (The Amnoon Oasis)
• Dakk (Ember Light Camp)

Signet of Capture

• Leaps Thunderclap (North Kryta Province)
• Gack Splotchplunk (Watchtower Coast)
• Fluum Banzo (Divinity Coast)
• Bramblehash (Sage Lands)
• Tree of Vitality (The Wilds)
• Splintertrunk (Ettin's Back)

Related skills

• Defiant Was Xinrae (elite)
• Protective Spirit
• Shelter
• Xinrae's Weapon (elite)

Notes

• The energy loss can be split between multiple characters maintaining the same enchantment on one character. Two characters with 8 Protection Prayers will each lose 2 energy per hit. Three characters at 13 Protection Prayers will each only lose 1 energy per hit. Two characters at 13 Protection Prayers will lose 2 and 1 energy, respectively. The first to cast takes the larger energy burden on an odd split. If characters are at differing attribute ranks of Protection Prayers, the lowest rank is used.
  • If the enchantment is split up so that each bonder will lose 1 energy, then each of the bonders can cast Life Bond on the character that is the target of Protective Bond, and then Balthazar's Spirit on themselves to cover all of the energy cost, and maintain Protective Bond as long as it isn't stripped. However, Life Bond only splits up damage from attacks, so 1 energy will still be lost for each packet of damage from non-attack damage. As long as the non-attack damage isn't reduced to zero, 1 energy can usually still be gained from Essence Bond.
• If more than one character is maintaining this enchantment and one character runs out of energy, all other characters stop maintaining the enchantment.

Trivia

• Before it was nerfed, this skill was the backbone to a 55 Monk build for farming the Underworld. According to Isaiah Cartwright, this skill was nerfed not solely because it was overpowered in PvE, but because of a recursion bug that could crash ArenaNet servers.
• During the beta, this skill was known as Mantle of Protection.

• The functionality of this skill has changed since its introduction; see its skill history for details.