is there any real downside of using natural bond?

[will i am]

you can just get someone to heal you with a medkit or just use it on someone else to clear your and someone else's

[Ardariel]

ofc there is, you cant heal fullgreen in one swoop. On higher diffs it is less of an issue, as constant fighting means you constanly gain TP, so it dontdecay as much, but on lege or champ... yeah, between encounters you can easily lose half of your THP after you heal yourself with anything.

Also having NB meaning you dont have +3-% thp, or barkskin.

So NB is more of a high-diff or extended diff thing, than lege or lower.

[Ghoul Hunter]

There isn't. It's not a popular pick, because it has a high right of passage, but it's one of the established winners in the community.

[Tony]

It s funny how different group of players have different opinions.

I could argue that natural bond is probably one of the worst trait.

As you said, you force another of your teammate to carry a medkit instead of a healing potion. if you went down, it s probably in the middle of a horde / patrol / event, this mean that they will have to find you in the middle of the chaos and 2 players will have to stay immobile for 3 / 4 seconds, with the healer that won t be able to block and defend himself.

the healing of natural bond is not a lot, i d prefer to have a higher security net of temporary hp to absorb the random hit that i take from time to time than 20 more green hp that will be gone in that hit.

Play as you want, no problem with it, but as you ask the community, i really don t see natural bond as the optimal trait, in higher difficulty i would say :
1 barskin : to protect you from assassin / pack master / storm / ratling
2 hand of shallya : to give you more with heal that will absorb the random hit everybody take from time to time
3 natural bond : a little regend, everybuff is cool to have

have fun killing rats !

[Khal'cynee]

its good in lower difficulty, because you will never get enought swarmer to be full thp and you dont need barskin in veteran because damage receive are low
beyond legend its a bad choice, you can get full thp in 5 second during swarm with the proper build and barskin become a must have to prevent special damage

[Ardariel]

Originally posted by Tony:

It s funny how different group of players have different opinions.

I could argue that natural bond is probably one of the worst trait.

As you said, you force another of your teammate to carry a medkit instead of a healing potion. if you went down, it s probably in the middle of a horde / patrol / event, this mean that they will have to find you in the middle of the chaos and 2 players will have to stay immobile for 3 / 4 seconds, with the healer that won t be able to block and defend himself.

the healing of natural bond is not a lot, i d prefer to have a higher security net of temporary hp to absorb the random hit that i take from time to time than 20 more green hp that will be gone in that hit.

Play as you want, no problem with it, but as you ask the community, i really don t see natural bond as the optimal trait, in higher difficulty i would say :
1 barskin : to protect you from assassin / pack master / storm / ratling
2 hand of shallya : to give you more with heal that will absorb the random hit everybody take from time to time
3 natural bond : a little regend, everybuff is cool to have

have fun killing rats !

Only trait that protects you from being oneshotted being NB.
Only trait i see being used on cata+ extensively being NB.

I mean... i dont say NB is best to use, but you cant argue with facts...only with interpretations of those facts.

I started using NB from day one, since i came from VT1 and got a habit to not facetank. Sure, in game 2 you got a LOT of leeway with THP system, yet NB just let me go on w/o care about healing items. And then we discovered its ability to save you from overheads... W/e good parts of other traits can be, for me, they would always be secondary to this one, insanely OP, property of NB. Especially on low-health no-res careers like pyro or WS.

[Ardariel]

Originally posted by Khal'cynee:

its good in lower difficulty, because you will never get enought swarmer to be full thp and you dont need barskin in veteran because damage receive are low
beyond legend its a bad choice, you can get full thp in 5 second during swarm with the proper build and barskin become a must have to prevent special damage

srsly, man, what kind of backwards logic it is? You dont need it on lower diffs cause (1) you have tons of heals around, (2) enemies are too scarce to stop THP degradation and (3)you have multiple wounds, so tons of heals you have would remain tons of heals even if you go down like a drunk wutelgi.
You use NB on high diffs, cause it protects you where other traits cant. And exactly where you need it. Especially on cata3+, where everything can oneshot you and only thing that let you survive those strikes w/o being down instanly on a ground is NB.

Have you even played those yourself? Cause i can see how one could avoid NB on cata or ndont see often, but on cata 3? Its like 95% of players run there with it.

[Khal'cynee]

Originally posted by Ardariel:

Originally posted by Khal'cynee:

its good in lower difficulty, because you will never get enought swarmer to be full thp and you dont need barskin in veteran because damage receive are low
beyond legend its a bad choice, you can get full thp in 5 second during swarm with the proper build and barskin become a must have to prevent special damage

srsly, man, what kind of backwards logic it is? You dont need it on lower diffs cause (1) you have tons of heals around, (2) enemies are too scarce to stop THP degradation and (3)you have multiple wounds, so tons of heals you have would remain tons of heals even if you go down like a drunk wutelgi.
You use NB on high diffs, cause it protects you where other traits cant. And exactly where you need it. Especially on cata3+, where everything can oneshot you and only thing that let you survive those strikes w/o being down instanly on a ground is NB.

Have you even played those yourself? Cause i can see how one could avoid NB on cata or ndont see often, but on cata 3? Its like 95% of players run there with it.

NB on veteran = full life every time, you never need heal stuff, and you dont need to farm thp
its just more "braindead"

[Ardariel]

Originally posted by Khal'cynee:

Originally posted by Ardariel:

srsly, man, what kind of backwards logic it is? You dont need it on lower diffs cause (1) you have tons of heals around, (2) enemies are too scarce to stop THP degradation and (3)you have multiple wounds, so tons of heals you have would remain tons of heals even if you go down like a drunk wutelgi.
You use NB on high diffs, cause it protects you where other traits cant. And exactly where you need it. Especially on cata3+, where everything can oneshot you and only thing that let you survive those strikes w/o being down instanly on a ground is NB.

Have you even played those yourself? Cause i can see how one could avoid NB on cata or ndont see often, but on cata 3? Its like 95% of players run there with it.

NB on veteran = full life every time, you never need heal stuff, and you dont need to farm thp
its just more "braindead"

You can run w/o any trait at all then, what is your point? That on veteran you dont any trait to play and suceed? THen i agree. NB being better on lower diff? You fail to demonstrate it so far. You only say it is w/o bringing forward arguments for your position.

[Khal'cynee]

Originally posted by Ardariel:

Originally posted by Khal'cynee:

NB on veteran = full life every time, you never need heal stuff, and you dont need to farm thp
its just more "braindead"

You can run w/o any trait at all then, what is your point? That on veteran you dont any trait to play and suceed? THen i agree. NB being better on lower diff? You fail to demonstrate it so far. You only say it is w/o bringing forward arguments for your position.

heal regen in lower diff = full life 99 % of the time, that what i mean, safest choice possible, barskin is overkill for example, assassin need 3 minute to kill you on recruit lmao
you can take some hit, only 15 hp lost because easy diff, and regen it in 1 minute, without that, these 15 are lost forever, and thp is bad because 3 rat are not enougt and there is plenty "elf main ranged spamer" below champion, so its just more "confortable"

[Sticky Mick]

I run NB on every class except Zealot and Unchained (for both of which I use Barkskin). NB is totally fine on Legend (where I usually carry a tome) or Cata (where I usually carry a medkit). It just frees up extra healing for the rest of the party.

[Ravenwild]

What's this about NB saving you from one shots? That's not what it says on the label, is there some hidden effect I'm not aware of?

[Ravenwild]

Makes sense, thanks.

[RaNdOmKiLs666]

NB can be fun to use on certain careers, especially if you can stack it with another type of regen or healing.

For example NB can be pretty useful on the Waystalker since you also have regen from waystalker passive when below 50%. Stacked together you can your green HP back to a decent level fairly quickly after a down.

NB on SoT is also pretty nice since again you are stacking it with the healing perks.

I also find NB pretty useful on squishy characters, like RV or BW. The reason being is you should play more defensively then normal since you can die easier. The odd bit of chip damage you do take will be healed by NB.

[Slayer Slayerson]

You will drown in whine if anybody ever finds out.

[Xatrion]

There's no downside to it per se, but you've got vastly better options in barkskin or boon of shallya. Personally, I only run it on careers that have horrible thp generation, such as bounty hunter or shade.