[Autumn]

I generally agree that Bonder has a lot of power creep in its kit at its disposal, it is arguably one of the best classes in the game, aside the top dogs like Black Knight, Rune Mage, Verglas, it sits right up there vying for the best class in the game. I'll go over my own gripes in a more concise fashion after I address some that I agree with here.

DW

Another fucky youkai here. DW bonded with shared pain is, while counterable, utmost cheese. Offering 75% DR to slash / pierce / blunt through shared pain, and a free resistance proc. Summoning removes your excorcism weakness too, provided you aren't running spirits, as does killing it, allowing you to straight up negate it's main weakness by toggling SP vs Excorcising non S/P/B weapon types. It's also a free silence with semi-reasonable inflict in a pinch.

Shared pain with Drowned Woman is probably the most abusive this class can ever get, the resistance proc whenever you trigger shared pain on Drowned woman through the summoner is then transfered to the original owner, this makes it so that you don't have to deal with Drowned Woman's holy weakness while also receiving the benefit of having a resistance proc itself, my gripes on Shared Pain are brought up in another thread, but I agree very much so that Shared Pain's shared damage being Akashic fixes both this AND the aforementioned immunity issue with Chun/Hatsu and such.

Reswalling

Resistance Walling is one of the most cancerous shit that Bonder has. Resistance walling mitigates damage dealt to you through shared pain, as does armour stacking, and cucks momentum if either of you are hit. Immunity through the Daisengan dragons installed is another option, but requires valuable youkai slots. Having 40% Fire resistance and watching your 'Weak to magic Seiryuu' get hit by a sear for 550 damage, mitigated to 165 through shared pain-- Of which you take 90 because of ele resistance and magic armour is more than a little bit scuffed, and mitigates a lot of weaknesses shared pain holds.

The DR this class can obtain is actually the highest in the game, it outpaces Black Knight even with Bulwark with 1 ability, that summons effectively a wraithguard that can run around damaging people or kiting enemies. a flat 50% you now have to deal with, with not much for counterplay other than AoE, which makes it like you're dealing your normal damage instead? Very unengaging to play against. Meanwhile Black Knight follows it up with a 20% (under certain conditions) and a 15% DR from the front, sacrificing a hand slot to do so, making it roughly a 32% DR, just barely surpassing Wraithguard (which has its own counterplays)

Kiting

On top of youkai having 5 movement to double-move away from you, Pinball strike + Shift dimension + Conducts allow youkai to fucking book it, and summoners to mitigate a shit tonne of potential damage. This is only exaggerated by the youkai global / dot damage and shared pain, though I do believe it ought to be nerfed when option like Phase python should have a niche.

Bonder is extremely mobile, this is actually typically uncharacteristic for Summoner in general, I think that Pinball Strike might need a very slight range nerf, Pinball also is one of the easiest allowances of directional combat, while a sidecut or hanging have to sometimes deal with parries and most likely deal with ripostes, Pinball Strike allows you to simply move behind someone before you attack, the amount of control this ability has is far too much.

The control that pinball governs needs to be addressed somehow, its range is pretty far, and it allows the bonder a huge opportunity every turn, the cooldown on this ability needs to be increased so that it cannot be used as a get out of duelist or BK scenario free card every single turn. a 3 round cooldown sounds more than fair to me, also the Knockback should be reduced down quite a bit.

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My own thoughts:

Bonder currently has the ascended youkai working for it to an egregious degree, this is mostly because Bonder enhances a singular youkai's potential by an absolute boatload, this further desensitizes the community's opinion towards ascended youkai as the likes of Ascended Seiryuu and Suzaku have devastating potential when parted pain is applied, halving their 27 per round maintenance costs.

This is a huge sway towards the power of these youkai, as now they have a damage amplification, reduced FP costs and benefit greatly from statwalling their opponents by just having upwards to +18 in all their stats, its absolutely just absurd the level of power these youkai can obtain on their own.

Additionally, bonder currently has such a strong basic attacking toolkit that it frequently draws the ire of physical builds, due to the overwhelming nature of the class just simply stat checking you through FAO, DR and Synchro Summon.

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Addendum:

Its not wrong to express any distaste in the class itself, its not the most balanced class out there, I personally think it has bigger strengths that can be addressed more than the others, as I think that shared pain's effectiveness is way way too strong for any class to reasonably have in the current landscape in the game.