Does blocking xmlrpc.php affect pinging update services like pingomatic

Because there are a lot of attacks lately on xmlrpc.php, I want to block access to this file or disable it.

I am aware some remote updating functions won’t work (like the mobile app) but that doesn’t matter in my case.

However, I want to be sure the updating services (like pinging Pingomatic) are not affected by this. Can anyone confirm me the pinging will be successful without xmlrpc.php being reachable? I don’t want the automatic pinging after new posts to be affected with this change.

As far as I remember pings are outgoing, they don’t need your site to accept incoming XML–RPC requests.

The call might not be even coming from your site at all. For example http://pingomatic.com/ site allows you to perform pings for arbitrary URLs.