Blink and fast characters

[Godmorgon]

Controlled Blink and ?blinking are obviously great escape tools. Blink, however, takes skill to use effectively, and I'm trying to understand better how to take advantage of it.

One use of Blink is to break adjacency with a dangerous monster when your movement speed is the same as the monster's:
• If you're slower than the monster, then Blink might buy you a few turns until they catch up, but you generally wouldn't be able to make a full escape.
• If you're faster than the monster, then you can break adjacency without blink.
• If you're the same speed as the monster, then once you break adjacency with Blink, the monster will not (generally) be able to close the gap, thus making a full escape at least possible.

I know Blink has other uses, such as getting outside of a crowd of monster who have you surrounded. This will be helpful even to a character with fast movement speed.

Am I right, however, that characters with fast movement speed should value Blink less than characters with average movement speed? That is, a fast character shouldn't as highly value +Blink on equipment, and shouldn't go as much out of their way to learn the Blink spell.

Are there other uses of Blink that I'm missing that would benefit a fast character?

[jwoodward48ss]

Mostly when you're next to multiple things. It's harder to kite multiple monsters in some situations. Blink can sometimes improve things. But yeah, there are better things than Blink for such a fast character.

[neverEnough]

It helps a lot when making creative use of tp scrolls, ie tryin to reach loot in Ice cave without cold res. Or stayin safe from other statue monsters. Or by-pass multiple alarm traps in ossuary. Reach far tiles over lava. Poison stab a polearm BigGuy and blinkaway. In long tunnels full of ppl, lets u choose which one to fight.

Source: thousands games as SpWr

[lethediver]

Its important to understand that blink TPs you to a random tile in range in your LOS. So if there's a lot of monsters chasing you, and you round the edge of a corridor or wall so you break LoS with the monsters, and then blink, you have a much better chance of arriving at a safe area.

Instead of just using escape items, its often better to blink first to create space, THEN read fog, fear, tp or what have you, rather than tanking an unecessary hit.

[JFunk]

Excepting centaurs, fast species are also frail, so there is greater value in getting out of melee range or danger generally. Blink also allows you to pass a monster in the case you get surrounded or even just sandwiched in a hallway. Movement speed can't save you in a situation like this, and careful play will only partially avoid it. If you are exercising the old saw of "just walk away" with tough monsters, and doing your careful luring, eventually you will get sandwiched by one of the wandering tough monsters you've walked away from and one of the moderately difficult monsters you're luring. This is a treacherous position whether you are a spriggan or felid or even a garbage centaur (maybe even worse for them as they have terrible dodge -- the magical defense of 'walking away' has its limits). Blink can allow you to solve this deadly situation easily without burning a teleport or fear.

[neverEnough]

forgot to mention:
* escape when trapped by nets
* enhanced early use of sling: 1) fire bullets until creep has reached u; 2) blink; 3) goto 1

[and into]

I'm not sure that's the best way to think about it, Godmorgan.

Basically, you should learn blink if, at any given time when the spell is available to be memorized, the cost of getting it online seems reasonable for a particular character. In practice, you will be faced with situations where (let's say) your most reasonable skilling choice is to decide among getting one more point of EV, a few more HP, or getting blink online (by training more dodging, fighting, or tloc). At that point you may want to pick it up even if its as a "just in case" measure against nets or what have you.

Perhaps (arguably) blink spell is lower priority for fast move-speed characters, in the abstract. But I think that move-speed's influence on the value is often going to be overwhelmed by other factors, including the simple fact that the spell is very cheap and doesn't care about spellpower.

[Godmorgon]

Thanks for all the replies.

What is clear to me now is that I can't properly assess the value of Blink for a given character until I use Blink more extensively in general. This thread has provided several ideas of how to do that.

I think the next time Blink is available, I'll try to "overuse" it, just to understand better what it can do.