The Correct usage of blink.

[Dux]

Done some farming lately and purchased Blink for my WHM.

I am curious what is considered best practise for Blink usage?

I am guess that before you rest after a fight you blink everybody then rest (in case you get aggrod).

Do you re-cast Blink on MT when it goes off or do you not bother?

[Miriamel]

Blink is self-cast only, actually, apart from the summon Garuda's Party Blink ability.

Basically you cast blink on yourself whenever you expect to get hit.

[Calianeri]

Blink is great. It's not 100% gauranteed to absorb a hit, but it's still good. It will last for 1 or 2 hits.

Cast Blink on yourself if your party's tank is having trouble holding aggro (for whatever reason) and you think it's likely that you'll get slapped around a bit by a hard-hitting or magic-using mob. If you know you'll be doing something that will draw aggro (like Benediction), cast it and/or Stoneskin beforehand.

If you're going to be taking lots of smaller hits, Stoneskin is a better choice. That absorbs a set amount of damage based on your enhancing skill.

Put them together and you can survive a fair bit of punishment, though they certainly won't make you a tank or anything.

[gario1]

I got blink as soon as I could, but never really used it... UNTIL.. Garilage Citadel! I just moved there yesterday from Kazham and now I ALWAYS keep up Blink+Stoneskin+Reraise. Saved my life multiple times already.

[Icemage]

Good timing is essential to using Blink. It takes a long time to cast, so a lot of players don't bother casting it in battle, but here's how I use it:

(1) Party is resting to full.

If I have 20MP left, I'll cast Blink right before resting. It has around a 10 minute duration, so that buys me an extra bit of insurance for the start of the next XP chain, for only 10 more seconds of rest.

(2) Use before using Divine Seal, Benediction, high level Cure, or Curaga.

You can almost always see these situations coming long before you actually use them, so when possible, cast Blink before using any of the above, since you're almost guaranteed to pull aggro.

(3) Keep it up against enemies that have strong area effect physical attacks if you plan on being in melee range.

While some enemies have effects like Bubble Shower which cannot be stopped by Blink, there are a handful of strong area/cone attacks which CAN be Blinked away. Some examples include:

Tiger - Claw Cyclone
Orc - Battle Dance
Rabbit - Whirl Claws
Weapon - Whirl of Rage
Gigas - Grand Slam
Gigas - Lightning Roar

If you have spare time in the middle of a fight when no one is taking huge amounts of damage, and the enemy can use any of these attacks, it's often worthwhile to cast Blink to help avoid the damage/effects from these attacks. Use your best judgement here, however - if your MP is already low, don't burn it on Blink - save it for a Cure instead.

As to how Blink actually works:

- It stops 2 attacks or non-X-ga spells which are directed against you before fading.
- The chance for it to stop any given attack seems to be somewhere around 75%.
- It does not work against most area effect attacks, such as Jamming Wave, Bubble Shower, Scream, etc.
- Any X-ga spell which hits you will instantly dispel your Blink, doing full damage (Diaga, Diaga II, Poisonga, Poisonga II, any elemental -ga spell).
- Lasts approximately 10 minutes before fading, if it doesn't absorb 2 attacks first.
- Can be recast to reset the "absorb counter" back to 2, even if you've already absorbed 1 attack or spell, or have had nothing absorbed yet.
- Is the same effect as a SMN/Garuda's Aerial Armor (they don't stack) - using either will reset the "absorb counter" back to 2, see above.


Icemage

[locus]

I've read the following on shitaraba before:

Blink creates two "mirror images" of yourself. When you have two mirror images, the chances an enemy will hit you is 1/3 or 33.3% of the time. Whenever a mirror image is hit, it absorbs the damage and disappears.

Hence, after one absorption, you are left with 1 mirror image and the chance of you being hit is 50%.

Unfortunately, in the game, it seems that the blink absorption rate is slightly higher than these numbers.

Personally, I've never had to use Blink for normal exp parties. The reason is because the casting time for blink is kind of terrible and you can't cast cure or na spells for all of 7 or so seconds. If you are experiencing hate problems (maybe due to ineffective tanks), I can offer you a little advice:

1) Use Regen as much as possible. Regen is mana efficient and creates very little hate.
2) If a monster attacks you, do NOT heal yourself. That gives you even more hate. When a monster deals damage to you, your hate goes down. It also allows other people (preferably the paladin) to cure you and get back hate. If the monster hits you more than three times in a row, you are either playing with bad tanks or you should go easy on the cure 4. (Or you just used Benediction/Curaga 2+ at a bad time and death is natural.)

If the former: Be afraid. Be very afraid.
If the latter: Ixnay on the yourfourkay, usterbay. ;P

As a general rule - until level 40, the ONLY time you should ever pull off a Curaga mid-battle is directly after a renkei. After 41, you can get a little more wanton as long as you aren't hitting more than 4 people with Curaga.

Icemage gave some pretty good advice - the main difference between him and me is that he's a taru... he has spare mp to burn and I don't. But I can usually take three hits and live easily whereas after three hits - he'll be more than half-dead. Perhaps that's why he uses blink more often. Something to consider.

[Bamce Sylph]

i recentally leveled my whitemage for sub reasons to 25, i did so in qufim island 80% of the time i had blink up, multiple reasons

i don't trust 80% (coincedence?) of the players in qufim, its they're first real experience w/ subjobs and what works, also about constantally voking and several other things.

its a safety net,
1) links are bad, links that go unoticed by melees/vokers until they hit/kill the whitemage are bad, blink gives me more time to tell them
2) w/ blink i can pull off bigger things, tank just got screwdrivered? i can cure 3 /seal cure2 alot safer b/c of blink giving them more time to get it off
3) benedition + blink= longer life expectancy you might make it to the zone before the mob eats you

ranged attacks, usually the first sign to melee's that they've lost agro is when the monster moves away from them. however, like certain giants in qufim few have ranged attacks which can hurt.

another note for keeping down hate on yourself beyond using regen constantally. don't heal mages, it only gives them badhabits (unless they're in danger of dieing) blackmages should have drain its a lvl 12 spell and at 24ish u defintaly have had enough time to quest it (not buy, quest it) also most mages i've met need to learn they're limitations how much to nuke, debuff, when to layoff, etc