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The Doppleganger - Why it Does What it Does


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Posting this with the results of about 17 hours of testing so far, will update with more information if anyone else has it.

 

It will use whatever skills it feels like from any school, regardless of what school you mod it into, the equal or domination mods merely bias it towards certain behavior. The way you control its skill usage is by the weapons and gear you have equipped when it's summoned (more on this later).

 

Your skill choices and mod choices on other skills will not mod its skills. It can cast skills that you have not yet acquired.

 

An unmodded dop will use skills from all three trees. A GI or AS modded dop will still use skills from all three trees.

 

Ranged weapons will confuse the dop, it will often close to melee range before attacking.

 

The following only apply if you have no +combat arts on your gear.

  1. Two handed mage staves generally act in a predicable fashion. a GI dop will cast AS spells and melee, sometimes buffing itself. An NN dop will most likely spam random levin array and inexorable subj, but might dislodge spirit as well as buffing itself with GI buffs.
  2. Giving a NN dop a non mage staff generally makes it cast AS spells and melee, some weapons will also cause it to use GI buffs but not GI skills.
  3. Most 1h staffs seem to count as non mage staffs for the dopp.
  4. Behavior is not consistent across weapons of the same type. Upgrading from one 2H sword to another 2H sword can completely change the behavior of your dop. The above rules are generally true, probably a little more than half the time they work.

 

Behavior is always consistent with the specific weapon(s) and gear equipped while summoning. As much as it may suck to have to do this, once you find a behavior that you like, keep that weapon and gear in a spare slots to use when summoning.

 

If your dop's behavior pattern includes the use of reverse polarity, it must be resummoned after every zone change, teleport etc or it will lock while trying to buff itself.

 

Also, making the dop a buff has no effect on its behavior. This is especially important because behavior that is good for a permanent dop can make the skill useless at low levels as a summon.

 

The dop does not seem to change it's behavior based upon what you are fighting. This can necessitate the use of multiple sets of summoning gear in order to assure the correct behavior for different situations.

 

The dop prefers Combat Arts that your gear has boni to over other Combat Arts

 

+All combat art gear drives the dop nuts, it doesn't seem to add +combat arts together, only looking at the highest bonus to each, so something like Tinwora's curse will change it's behavior drastically.

 

The dop does not exhibit a preference for the school that you modded it into. It seems to have an internal order where buffs rank higher than combat skills.

 

I'll add more once I can figure out the priorities. But so far levin array followed by dislodge spirit seem to be the favorites for a GI dopp.

 

The dopp can use three buffs without concentration, but will randomly drop buffs off as well in multiple buff situations.

 

 

 

If anyone has any corrections or additional information, please let me know, and I'll add it in.

 

Edit: Updated to include the effect that +CA gear has on the dopp.

Edited by Tene
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Amazing first post Tene. I"m going to bring some peeps I know who are Inquisitor experts as well to offer some feedback on your guide.

 

Are you happy with the testing you did to produce this data?

 

If so, we could have stuff for the SacredWiki here if you're interested in contributing your data. I myself have never used this CA, but lately I've been considering in adding it to my Boss Combo...free extra damage, right? And does the Doppelganger draw Agro?

 

:D

 

gogo

 

p.s. What do you think about this thread here on the Sacred International Forum:

 

http://forum.sacredeng.ascaron-net.com/sho...ead.php?t=61810

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Are you happy with the testing you did to produce this data?

Not at all, I absolutely hate things that don't seem to work in a predictable fashion so I won't be happy til I can tell how it will behave before I cast it.

 

If so, we could have stuff for the SacredWiki here if you're interested in contributing your data. I myself have never used this CA, but lately I've been considering in adding it to my Boss Combo...free extra damage, right? And does the Doppelganger draw Agro?

It can draw aggro, but it's not terribly squishy. I'm working on a dop based build for HC so It's probably be best to wait a bit to change the wiki, cause I'll have a ridiculous amount of testing done by the end of the week.

p.s. What do you think about this thread here on the Sacred International Forum:

 

http://forum.sacredeng.ascaron-net.com/sho...ead.php?t=61810

Well, I have now updated the post to reflect the effect of +CA gear on the dop, +dop skills don't seem to cause the infinite army buff for me at least. Tinwora's was really throwing me off til I figured out what it was.

Edited by Tene
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Thanks Gogo :D I've been using this CA for quite a long time, and made this post at official forum when finally figured out how to control him.

 

Tene, your research is correct in most points. Only thing that I'd disagree is about players mod affecting his CAs. I noticed that when he uses CE mobs gets stunned sometimes, and I had no other sources of "chance to stun" other that "Startle" silver CE mod. So it seems when "Equal" mod is picked he does receive mods that player picked for Gruesome aspect.

Some things that I'd like to add:

 

- only gear with native bonus "+CA" count. Socketing a rune won't work.

- he does seem to benefit from certain bonuses, like "+run speed". Mine is currently 130% and he doesn't seem to be slower than that.

- I'd recommend "Determination" mod for everyone. At first, he won't be around for most of the time, but at higher levels 100+ and huge amount of runes eaten he can be summoned more than 50% of play time. Some numbers from my Inquisitor:

 

Level 119, Astute Supremacy Focus ~60 hard points, ~100 total

Doppelganger CA level ~ 80, memorized runes ~240

Doppelganger duration ~100 seconds, cooldown + regen about 128 seconds. Dopple level 180

 

Now some words on situation when +all CAs gear is used. Tene figured it out corectly, again :)

- when cast, he will run up to a mob, strike it most probably with RM and than will active buff, and repeat until all buffs are active. He always does that in order: PC, RP, SR. Note that his SR is capable of "stealing" souls, which is bad news for anyone who relies on SR "too much" and would like to make him perma buff.

- these CAs he uses the most for me:

RM (he doesn't detect if there are multiple mobs, even one is enough)

DS (will use it even on trash mobs)

PD

LA (very poor damage unfortunately)

FF

He does uses these CAs with intervals, not in a row. During this he uses his primary attack. FF boosts his damage considerably.

 

His most annoying bug is "failed buff recast" after TPing. Only recasting him helps with this. He also tends to "lock up" or walk around doing nothing, but these are just temporary.

Edited by Zonc1
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The dopp receives no benefit from anything socketed.

 

There is a damage modifier applied to life leech by the dop, but I cannot figure out what it comes from or how to increase it yet.

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This guy seems to have his own CAs levels or some kind of mulitplier. On level 123, my RM does about ~10k of damage. But this dude, level 198 does 55k (yes 55000 I saw this few times when fighting the boar). Now I know what killed my buddy when we had a little friendly PvP session :P

Edited by Zonc1
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This guy seems to have his own CAs levels or some kind of mulitplier. On level 123, my RM does about ~10k of damage. But this dude, level 198 does 55k (yes 55000 I saw this few times when fighting the boar). Now I know what killed my buddy when we had a little friendly PvP session :drinks:

 

I think (Can't confirm it yet) that it takes your weapon damage * Astute Modifier * Some hidden dopp level modifier and gets it's base weapon damage. Then it takes it's internal CA level (hidden) adds non socketed bonuses and then uses that CA level. It may possibly use the AS modifier again.

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I recently got Leech Life mod on RM, and my Dopple with Equal mod got it too immediately. 100% sure, there is the same graphical effect when he uses RM.

So he DOES gets our mods, but I think only according to the silver mod.

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I recently got Leech Life mod on RM, and my Dopple with Equal mod got it too immediately. 100% sure, there is the same graphical effect when he uses RM.

So he DOES gets our mods, but I think only according to the silver mod.

 

 

Confirmed, my original problem was I was testing AS mods on a GI modded dop. Modded my LA with life steal and my AS modded dopp picked it up as well. Just hadn't gotten around to updating the guide yet. Still haven't figured out how the dopp determines his CA and ability levels yet though.

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While playing online with my friend a few months back we witnessed a funny behavior in the doppleganger. It all came from a certain piece of armor my friend was wearing. I am not sure anymore, but the piece of equipment was giving either +x to all Combat Arts in a tree or +x to all Combat Arts. The results were hilarious. The doppleganger CA had been modded into a buff, and somehow the dopp started using the dopp buff. So we had one dopp summoning a dopp summoning a dopp summoning a dop. . . At some point we reached up to 10 dopps on screen at once. The only thing stopping them from reproducing infinitely was their silly habit of removing their buff randomly, so if the first dop removed his buff all the others after him disappeared. I am not sure if this has been fixed, but it was interesting.

Edited by Ygdrad
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I believe it has been fixed in some of the recent patches. I use +all CA gear and he doesn't clone himself.

And btw, it's not that great becouse they keep mulitplying themselves instead of fighting, and we don't get XP for doppels' doppels kills (!).

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I know, I forced my friend to change that equipment piece since the game was lame, all we could do was sit there and watch the army of dopps kill everything and leaving us with nothing.

Edited by Ygdrad
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