Understanding the fine print for blindness

Question

The description for blindness says simply that the "next outgoing attack" misses. What, exactly, for the purposes of this condition, constitutes an attack?

For instance, if a warrior is blinded and then uses his hundred blades skill (which consists of up to 8 "strikes"), does he miss only on the first strike or do all the hundred blade strikes miss, i.e. is the attack just the first strike or all 8?

Also, what happens with AoE attacks? Let's say a blinded ele starts a meteor shower, does each little meteorite miss? Does the first foe to walk into a blinded necro's mark of blood get to walk through unscathed and any subsequent foes are less lucky? Or are AoE skills exempt from being affected by blindness?

To get a little more complicated, take the case of a thief using his black powder skill while blinded. Obviously the shot won't do any damage (thus ridding the thief of blindness), but does the combo field (smoke) still get created? If so, are nearby foes blinded themselves? Is the target blinded (even if the target isn't "nearby", the black powder skill combos with itself to cause blindness) despite the shot "missing"?

I know this is getting into the nitty gritty details of the condition but was hoping someone would have some more insight into its intricacies than I've been able to gain from searching and reading the wiki.

Answer 1

As far as I've seen (playing a Guardian and a Thief both based on some Blind) I can answer you:

1) An attack is a single strike or a single projectile or something like this, something that can miss and that triggers "attack effects".

2) Hundred blades inflicts 8 attacks, so the first one misses for Blind purpose, while others will go on target, unless the Blind source comes from a renewable source, like a field.

3) A meteor shower actually throws lots of attacks, notice how you could, with some luck, pass it unharmed if you manage to avoid the single meteors, so the first one hitting a target should miss, ending the blind effect (must try with my Elementalist, now that I think about it), while a frost or poison field is not really an attack itself, it doesn't make attacks, you trigger their effect by walking into them, so they are unaffected from Blind.

4) The Thief sample follows the same rule for condition fields, if it's the field "activelly" trying to hurt you (like a meteor shower, again) it is affected, otherwise it works normally, notice that the Blind condition doesn't prevent the attack to start, it prevents the attack to hit, so attacks which don't follow a hit/miss rule are not affected from Blind. Being the field normally created, combo skills will also work.

Again, this answer is based on my experience being sometimes the inflictor of Blind, and sometimes the one who get blinded. Hope this helps.

EDIT: For pulse AoE the Blind condition negates the first pulse for every foe on the AoE, but other effects and subsequent pulses will work as intended.

EDIT2: Of course, if the AoE is compose of a single hit, it will miss completely due to the Blind condition.