Manifold bond is supposed to apply all the statuses from a companion's weapon onto enemies whenever they hit them with one of their abilities. The mod is quite clear that this should only apply to their Precept abilities; however in testing I noticed that the retaliatory splash damage that procs up to once every 2s from Nourish also apparently counts as a Precept ability for use with Manifold bond, even though it isn't.
As a result, you can spread a whole lot more statuses and have your companion be a whole lot safer if you build around this trick. Doesn't work as well on sentinels.
also I tried Diversified Denial and while all 3 mini-hounds proc their own Nourish splash, potentially greatly increasing the number of splashes, it breaks Manifold Bond and will only apply Viral.