Blink Dodging

EDIT: This post is not like "How to blink dodge?". It's more like "When can I blink dodge???".

Some days back, someone requested me an explanation on Blink Dodging i.e. which spells can be dodged using blink. So this is a post about it. It’s still not complete but exhaustive enough to cover the point. But first, some important points about blink:

- Blink is an ability that teleports the user a short (long distance in case of Furion) distance away. It is often used for initiating and escaping fights, and can even be used to dodge spells and attacks. Heroes with blink or blink-like skills are therefore difficult to kill and frequently employed in competitive games because of their extensive mobility/ganking potential. Kelen's Dagger is also a common item choice by heroes that require precise placement for their skills' effectiveness (Earthshaker, Crystal Maiden), or that depend heavily on the element of surprise (Bradwarden).

- Blink has both a minimum and maximum distance. Attempting to Blink shorter than the minimum distance will generate an error message, but attempting to Blink farther than the maximum distance will instead send the hero 4/5 of the maximum distance in that direction.

- Blink usually displays an animation at the target point when the spell begins casting, not when the spell is actually cast. Quickly canceling the skill by hitting Stop will therefore display a Blinking animation without actually performing the skill, providing a means of faking out opponents. This is most commonly used with Furion's Teleport, because of the long casting time and obvious animation.

- Blink and Blink Strike are two different skills. So, what I write in this post may or may not apply to blink strike.

Blink Dodging

Blink can be used to dodge most spells with a projectile. The hero must Blink after the projectile is released and before the projectile makes contact. The impact animation of the projectile hitting is still shown, but the spell will have no effect on the Blinking hero. If the projectile is homing, the projectile will follow the hero to its new location and display the impact animation there; otherwise, the impact animation will be shown at the hero's location before Blinking.

To determine if you can blink dodge a particular spell or not depends on the base ability of the skill.

- Storm Bolt based abilities - eg. Storm Bolt, Hell Fire, Magic Missile, Unstable Concoction, Ogre Magi's Fireblast, Spirit Lance, Shuriken Toss, Chaos Knight's Chaos Bolt, Mana Void, Assassinate, DK's Dragon Tail, Lucent Beam, Lightning Bolt, Rexxar's Primal Roar, etc. [yes there are more!]- These can be dodged no matter what the speed of the projectile is unless you'r real close to them and they just appear on top of you. Dodging slow projectiles like storm bolt is easy but its rare to see people dodging fireblast and chaos bolt due to their high missile projectile speeds.

- Shadow Strike based abilities - eg. QoP, Viper Strike - Can be dodged like storm bolt based abilities.

- Fan of Knives missile abilities - eg. Scream of Pain, Heat Seeking missiles, Echo Slam, Necrolyte's Death Pulse, Quill Spray, etc. - These can also be dodged but blink dodge doesn't help it, you need to escape from it for 30 or so seconds and it will not damage. So practically, you can't dodge it, but death pulse is slow enough for to blink away from it for a long time.

- Chain Lightning based abilities - eg. Chain Lightning, Furion's wrath of nature, mjollnir, etc. - Chain lightning actually damages by searching for a target after each bounce. After each bounce, it searches for a target in a particular AoE (different for different spells) and stops if no target is found. You can dodge it only if you can get out of the AoE of the skill before it acquires you the target. Once it acquires your hero as the target, you can't dodge it even with blink.

- Acid Bomb Abilities - eg. Tidehunter's Gush, Ogre Magi's Ignite, etc. - Cannot be dodged.

- Parasite Based Ability - Spawn Spinderlings - Can be dodged.

- Ensnare Based Abilities - Naga's net, Pit of Malice, Earthbind, Dark Troll Warlord's Ensnare -
Point#1, you can't blink when you are ensnared.
Point#2, Naga's net and troll's ensnare use a projectile before ensnaring. The target gets ensnared whatsoever and cannot be dodged... but, you can blink while the net's projectile is in air so you can get into a safer position.
Point#3, You can dodge earthbind and pit of malice... just don't get caught into it.

- I may still be missing some points in this post... Kindly make a note to me if thats the case. The information I presented here is 99% correct in my knowledge. I'm still searching for exceptions and would be happy if someone corrects me.

- If someone gets inspired by this post and wants to post it in his own blog/website, plz give the credit to dotasecrets.co.nr and put a source link on your website.

- I've not included the complete explanation to many base abilities in this post. I would be posting on these in the "dotasecrets" section in our forum dssforum.co.nr. You could also use the forum to get explanations as I would not be able to answer every question posted. :( [Time Constraints]. Thanks for your cooperation.

:)