Augury Rock/Guide

The Doppelganger

The Doppelganger is level 20 (Normal mode) or level 30 (Hard mode); it equips the same skills as you, and has rank 12 in each attribute of your primary and secondary professions, excluding the primary attribute of your secondary profession, and uses maximum damage weapons: a spear at distance, a Shocking axe in melee range. It can use any melee attack skill with its axe and any ranged attack skill with its spear.

Both you and the Doppelganger are under the effects of the Divine Fire enchantment for the duration of the mission.

The Doppelganger will outperform you in most situations, especially pure damage, and heal itself and interrupt more effectively than you can, but:

• Most importantly, you can use skills more intelligently than the AI.
  • It uses "maintainable" skills even if they have no benefit (e.g. Air Attunement despite lacking other Air Magic spells, or point blank area of effect skills even if you fight at distance), wasting energy and time during which you can simply attack.
    • The most notable of those are Nature Rituals, as the Doppelganger will always prioritize them, they have a long activation time and their effect affect both sides.
  • It rarely dodges.
  • It tends to prioritize the skill bar from left to right, so you can benefit by arranging sequences or chains oddly.
  • It does not execute sensible skill combos.
  • It does not spam skills.
  • It will foolishly use skills that remove useful enchantments, stances or preparations.
• It cannot use PvE-only skills, excluding the 10 Anniversary elite skills.
• The Doppelganger does not have a pet or a shield, and cannot benefit from certain skills that require a specific weapon (such as Riposte or Grenth's Aura).
• You can pre-cast enchantments before being taken to the arena.
• You can increase attribute ranks beyond 12 using runes and the +1 attribute rank from headgear.

General Tips

Make sure you adjust your build to this mission, general purpose builds and techniques will not work. Ensure also that you have max armor. If you do not have it yet, you can obtain it quickly through collectors in the Crystal Desert.

Regarding your skills:

• Do not bring healing skills! They only delay the fight as the Doppelganger will also use those skills.
• The easiest way to deal with the Doppelganger is attack punishment. Many professions have some form of punishment. Just using the skills and letting the Doppelganger kill himself from it will work most of the time (Bear in mind that you can also employ most of these skills if that profession is your secondary profession):
  • Empathy (Mesmers). You can dodge the Doppelganger's attacks.
  • Insidious Parasite or Price of Failure, and/or Spiteful Spirit. (Necromancers). If using Insidious Parasite, you must take the damage.
  • Flashing Blades (Assassins).
  • Sliver Armor (Elementalists).
  • Riposte and Deadly Riposte (Warriors). Gladiator's Defense can be used as well, but the skill is usually available in the next mission.
  • Retribution, Shield of Judgment (Monks).
• Other punishments can work as well, notably anti-spells (Backfire), anti-enchantments (Shatter Enchantment, Scourge Enchantment), anti-block (Defile Defenses), providng you bring the corresponding skills.
• Many builds take advantage of your opponent's inability to use PvE-only skills. See also: PvX. Some examples:
  • Bring Ursan Blessing, Pain Inverter, and an Asura summon.
  • Use a melee weapon and bring Sneak Attack to render the Doppelganger harmless.
  • Bring Ebon Vanguard Sniper Support, Signet of Infection, and Ebon Vanguard Assassin Support to kill the Doppelganger within seconds.
  • Bring Asuran Scan with a blocking effect to counter block on the Doppelganger while letting you benefit from the block effect.
• In Normal mode, Frenzy will allow you to deal double damage against the Doppelganger (don't use the skill yourself).
• Skills with health sacrifice (from the Necromancers attributes or Offering of Spirit) can work well. Scourge Sacrifice or Awaken the Blood will double the sacrifice.
• Nature Rituals, even useless ones, will allow you benefit from their effects (notably Favorable Winds, Winnowing, but also Lacerate and Toxicity) while keeping the Doppelganger busy activating them.
• You can leave skill slots empty.
• Non-casters can rely on bringing spammable attack skills as the Doppelganger will use these less frequently than you.
• If fighting at distance, bring equipment or skills that protect against piercing damage. For melee, bring protection against lightning damage.
• Use a ranged weapon and bring ranged attack skills for it, but move to melee range. The Doppelganger will switch to axe and be unable to use the ranged attack skills.

Additional Profession-specific tactics

Warrior

• Bring Wild Blow and a number of adrenal skills with high adrenaline cost. Use only adrenal skills and let the Doppelganger lose its adrenaline everytime it uses Wild Blow.
  • You can increase your advantage through adrenaline-building skills, such as Enraging Charge.

Ranger

• Bring Troll Unguent and Savage Shot; the Doppelganger will only use Savage Shot to interrupt spells, while you can easily prevent it from healing.
• Use a preparation before the cinematic.
• Bring traps and plant them along the side walkways. Avoid and lure the Doppelganger into them, and it will eventually die.
• With Nature Rituals:
  • Use an area damage over time spell to destroy Nature Rituals, forcing the Doppelganger to recreate them. Quickening Zephyr will allow to do this quicker.
  • Bring Melandru's Arrows as the Doppelganger has an enchantment on it (Divine Fire), so your attacks will inflict constant bleeding and deal +damage.

Monk

• In Normal mode, the Doppelganger will only use Healing Breeze to counter health degeneration, not health loss. Bring this as the only skill and wand it to death.
• A 55 Monk build works well in Normal mode.
• Bring four useless maintained enchantments (such as Blessed Aura, Divine Boon, Holy Veil, and Life Attunement) and four damaging skills from Smiting Prayers. Use only the Smiting Prayers skills, while the Doppelganger wastes its energy on maintained enchantments it cannot benefit from.
• The AI does not consider Ray of Judgment as an area of effect skill and will not run. Evade the incoming rays and you should eventually be the one left standing. Combine with Arcane Echo for a faster fight.
• Use Dismiss Condition and ensure you inflict no conditions. The AI will not use this just for healing, but you can as you are enchanted with Divine Fire.

Necromancer

• Take only two skills - Insidious Parasite and Enfeebling Blood, then just wait until the Doppelganger kills itself. You will need to recast them once.
• Weakness from Enfeeble or Enfeebling Blood will reduce the damage taken from the Doppelganger's attacks.
• Bring health sacrifice skills. The doppelganger will sacrifice itself to death. Awaken the Blood can help boost the health sacrifice cost, but do not use it yourself.

Mesmer

• Use only Empathy. Do not attack. You can dodge its attacks, but just maintain the hex and wait for the Doppelganger to kill itself.
  • This works even better if you bring an IAS (especially Frenzy) or in Hard Mode, as the increased attack speed will result in quicker deaths.
  • Distortion, Mantra of Lightning (exploiting its lightning axe in melee), Spirit of Failure can be used if defense is required.

Elementalist

• Use your secondary class to damage the Doppelganger when it attacks (e.g. Empathy for Mesmers, Insidious Parasite for Necromancers).
  • For defense you can protect yourself with Blinding Flash, Armor of Earth, Armor of Frost or Ward Against Melee/Ward Against Elements.
• Use Blinding Flash to maintain Blind. Bring a wand or staff and attack the doppelganger. The AI will not Blind you unless you use a martial weapon.
  • Bringing a weapon dealing Fire damage or Cold damage along with Conjure Flame or Conjure Frost respectively will increase your damage without affecting the Doppelganger's.
    • Mark of Rodgort with a weapon dealing Fire damage can be used to inflict Burning.

Assassin

• You can rely on finishing a strong dagger combo faster than the Doppelganger. Bring "maintainables" from your secondary profession to occupy the Doppelganger while you begin your combo.
  • Bring any lead and off-hand attack with Death Blossom and Moebius Strike. Repeat the latter two until dead.
  • Golden Lotus Strike, Fox Fangs, Death Blossom, Flourish, then start again.
• Bring a PvE-only skill that allows you to skip the lead attack. Any off-hand and dual attack combination will then be available to you but not the Doppelganger. Repeating Strike is especially worth mentioning.
  • Sneak Attack is a PvE-only lead attack. Sneak Attack is especially effective as it applies Blind.
  • "You Move Like A Dwarf!" or Brawling Headbutt will cause Knockdown, and various off-hand attacks (e.g. Falling Spider) require a knockdowned foe.
  • Asuran Scan or Pain Inverter are PvE-only hexes and various off-hand attacks require a hexed foe.
• Critical Agility provides strong defensive and offensive effects.

Ritualist

• Using spirits, after the cinematic, immediately fallback up the ramp. The Doppelganger will cast its spirits in the middle of the map, so you will be outside of their detection and attack range. Cast there your own spirits. The Doppelganger will run to you, getting easily killed by the spirits. Shadowsong, Painful Bond or Signet of Spirits are particularly effective, while you can still attack with Brutal Weapon.

Paragon

• Bring only chants except Ballad of Restoration, Chorus of Restoration, Defensive Anthem and Song of Restoration. Do not use any skills, just attack the Doppelganger while it wastes time activating chants it cannot benefit from.
• Bring only spear attacks (such as Disrupting Throw, Cruel Spear, Harrier's Toss, and Slayer's Spear) and chants (such as Anthem of Flame). Move within melee range of the Doppelganger. It will change to a melee weapon and be unable to use any skill.

Dervish

• If you have a form up before activating the final glyph, it will be removed before entering the hall with the Doppelganger.
  • Interrupting the Doppelganger's form (with "You Move Like a Dwarf!" for instance) can be effective.
• Grenth's Aura can provide healing. The Doppelganger receives no healing because it does not use a scythe.
• Mirage Cloak can help attack punishment strategies.

External links

• Any/Rt Signet of Spirits Solo Content at PvXwiki
• Any/N Augury Rock HM at PvXwiki