Before you ask:

No, it still doesn't work going into or out of the flag rooms in Warsong Gulch.

Places it does work:

Going into and out of most other doorways. Up stairs. Through a great many smaller objects. Over unusual terrain, far more frequently than it used to. Overall: it works a lot more often than it doesn't work.

See, in case you missed it (as I did until helpful tipster James pointed it out to me this morning), Ghostcrawler dropped by a thread on the Damage Dealing forums (ironically titled "Blink Will Never Be Fixed") to drop this bombshell on us:

"There was a fix to Blink crossing terrain (such as indoor to outdoor) in 3.2.2."

I don't know about you, but I've been vigorously combing the book of Revelation for other signs of the coming apocalypse to be on the lookout for, just so I'm ready. Details after the break.

So anyway, I've spent some time on the live realms testing this "fix." The results have been...uneven. It works in some places it didn't previously, still doesn't work in some places it never has, and actually does work in some places it has absolutely no right working.

A brief history of Blink, for those who might wonder what all of the fuss is about:

• 2004: World of Warcraft is released. Mages, the single best class in the game, have a bunch of spells. One of them is Blink. It purports to teleport the caster 20 yards forward. It doesn't really work.
• 2009: Blink still doesn't really work.

Oh, there were times when it actually did work, but there were far more times when it would do one of the following things instead:

1. Teleport you backward.
2. Teleport you forward 2 yards.
3. Teleport you to the same spot you just teleported from.
4. Make you fall through the world.

It was sort of cute until the first time your mage found him or herself fleeing from a rogue and tried to Blink to safety, only to have the spell warp your mage backward onto the rogue's stabbing implements instead. As I've always said, it's all fun and games until a mage gets stabbed.

Anyway, I've lamented Blink's perpetual brokenness on no less than eight hundred and seventy-two occasions, and every couple of weeks a topic like the one above appears on the official forums like a sort of mage tradition, from some bewildered mage or another, wondering why one of his signature spells continues to malfunction in such hilarious and frequently painful ways. So when I saw this post, I was naturally skeptical. Blink's like a running joke. The idea that it'll ever actually get fixed almost doesn't compute.

Here's how my unscientific testing went:

If their main goal with this fix was to make Blink work more often going into and out of buildings, they have mostly succeeded. It seems to work just about everywhere. Except the flag rooms. Stupid flag rooms.

Though occasionally a small object or terrain oddity would still make the spell malfunction, the frequency with which this happens seems to have gone down significantly. For example: though I failed once trying to Blink over the benches in the center of Dalaran, I succeeded on all of my other attempts to Blink through them (about twenty tries). Also, I found I could Blink through the fountain there every time. I don't remember being able to do that before.

You still can't Blink off of ledges, and if you attempt to Blink through walls, you still tend to teleport right up to the wall and no further. The "Blink before you hit the ground to survive a fall" thing still works as it always has. Blinking while falling still also stops your forward momentum.

The places where the fix seems most apparent are the places Ghostcrawler mentioned specifically: over unusual terrain and indoor to outdoor. Though it still isn't perfect, I noticed almost no crazy Blink malfunctions during my testing today. If my Blink didn't work, I usually knew why. If nothing else, that's the best part about this fix; it seems like Blink largely follows its own rules now. It works when it should, and doesn't when it shouldn't.

If nothing else, this makes life as a mage a little bit more consistent. Though we still can't be 100% certain, when we press our Blink button, that it'll work the way we want it to, we can now depend on it far more often than ever before. I don't know about you, but I'm not sure I know how to live in a world where Blink works. But I do know I'm going to have a blast figuring it out.

Edit: Suck on it, warlocks.

Tags: blink, blink-bug, blink-fix, damage-dealing-forums, ghostcrawler, mage-spells, mages, patch-3.2.2, patch-3.2.2-bugs, patch-3.2.2-changes, patch-3.2.2-wow, warsong-gulch, wow-mage

Filed under: Mage, Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Bugs, Classes