The action during blanching needs to be a brisk one. For matured teas, such as puers, the way the water reaches the leaves has to be gushy to make sure every leaf get a good wash. For teas with delicate tastes, such as Milan Xiang type of oolongs, the water reaches the leaves quite gently so as not to over heat the leaves. Water is to be poured out quite immediately, so no sitting there. Coincidently, there will be an article about this in the next update in a few days.
As with top drop, you have to skip the process of blanching. It is rather like two different ways of cooking. The idea of top drop is to let water envelope each leaf to give it the right heat instantly. Therefore, the leaves have to be dropped a few at a time, let them sink a bit before another round of drop. Do not use the tasting standard of tea water ratio, otherwise it gets too strong because of this quite efficient way of extraction. 1 to 100 is max. Or even lower, depending on your preference of astringency. Top drop is also better when using larger vessel, where heat loss is relatively slower than smaller ones. I normally use 250 ml to 500 ml ones, with thick walls.
One shortcoming of small gaiwans is that they cannot hold heat for very long, as in the case of top drop.
