This regular enemy is insanely strong, he is seen in pairs, each copy summoning 2 copies of itself with 0 speed and they have like 80 health, for each copy his 10 damage attack is repeated.
Even if u destroy 2 of them the other 4 are going to perform 40 damage points each! I dont know how to counter them but they look way too powerful.
I faced them once with my frost team and while they looked scary, they never actually got to do any damage as I just frost novaed them on turn 2 with Varden and they were all dead before they got to act on turn 3.
fire should also take them out with the balinda, rag, geddon; flame dart>inferno>die, insects!
but yeah the most ridiculous non-boss fight by far IMO.
I agree, these guys are way overtuned, especially in heroics. Nerf the hp or nerf them to one copy each.
The only way to perform it, is to heavily boost your comp with fire damage.
Inferno + die,insects! Will do only 76 damage with the right equips and they have almost 85 health.
I guess it depends on where you encounter them, obviously the earlier you encounter them the less health, the later you better hope to have gotten good treasures. all I know is the one time I encountered them with fire I killed them without a loss.
These guys and the naga battlemages are the reason I wasn’t able to do the new Darkshore bounties with the Random Mercs On The Task Board party, and had to bring in the fire team to carry three of the task board mercs (maybe some of you finished all available tasks before this patch; I’ve finished a lot but nowhere near all). On normal, inferno + die insects will wipe the board clear of doppelgangsters, easy peasy. On heroic, probably not, as Kamikaze said…
In general I’m not thrilled with the new climb encounters. Doppelgangsters = if you’re not playing fire (or apparently frost), lose at least one merc.
Naga battlemages = if you put a green on the board and can’t nuke a red before speed 10 acts, lose a merc. So orcs and dragons are both in trouble here, for example.
That green naga that boosts naga damage by 10 against anything that Attacked seems like another anti-orc enemy.
I haven’t had occasion to try any of these in heroic yet. Hopefully something like fire team to climb, three other mercs to take the boss fight is a viable approach for all of them… Trying to climb with a specialized boss fight party and facing a restart if these nasty encounters are unavoidable would be very frustrating.
This fight is a fire damage mercenaries check.
This fight invalidates almost all comps that do not have massive turn 1 AoE 
And still challenges hard those that do.
It doesn’t really challenge frost comp at all. Even on heroic as the last fight when they have like 90+ hp each, they still always die without ever getting to act once after splitting. Balinda, Varden, and Lokholar just obliterate them.
I beat them with a dragon comp, but I lost 2 key members in doing so. Why dragons? Because Old Guardian suggested it as the party for Captain Shivers. Oh, and I was running Normal not Heroic.
The proverbial monkey wrench in the works, but one that should be wielded against the designers…
Nerf or eliminate.
yeah when doing the event in the new bounties I’m going to be trying to plan a route where I can most easily avoid fighter fights …running into these with one of the comps we’re forced into is going to be ridiculous.
This ridiculously overpowered normal encounter has still not been nerfed.
Even Fire comps get wiped many times if they weren’t able to pick up good treasures. None of the other comps stand a chance, lol.
Do the Math Blizzard, End of Turn 1 6 Doppelgangsters with 60+ hp.
Worst case scenario, Turn 2 at speed 6, Each of these 6 Doppelgangsters will do 60 damage.
6*60 = 360 damage WTF
Blizzard, you are completely out of your mind to release what is basically a landmine, disguised as a normal encounter, that instantly turns most runs into a failure.
People must be playing with bad comps then as I have yet to ever even see any of the doppelgangsters do damage as they are always dead or frozen before they get to act. Even when it’s the last encounter before the boss on heroic. And I don’t play fire.
They essentially skip their first turn, and if you can’t kill at least a couple of them before they act on the second round, the problem is in your comp. I am much more worried going against many of the trash fights in heroic winterspring over doppelgangsters.
Their damage also comes in very small increments, meaning any kind of damage reduction ability (like the very common Toughness treasure) makes them essentially harmless.
Here is a couple ways you can easily handle them.
Fire Team (like you said)
Frost Team
Naga Team
Pirate Team. (In fact, just put Mr. Smite on whatever team your playing and have him use Overboard on turn 2 against doppelgangsters and they will all be dead really fast.)
what an fn joke. I guess another event is ruined from this crap. Dodge fighter spots. Cause if you don’t. You lose!
Btw, i play Nature comp. So if 3 doppeltrash of the live. One of the blue guys drops. Which Kills the run.
Be4 you start a run look at the map, the last 2 zones have these foes. If you get a green node just make sure there’s an alternative route before climbing. The event has been ok so far, as we are getting heroic tasks soon we’ll soon see. Last 2 events task 9 was the hardest. I climb with no trouble whatsoever with Anduin/Cornelius/Velen combo no fights lost. I was using cookie for the xtra health at the beginning, but an all human comp can have big stats by the end.
I would give their initial copying speed 6-7. That way you can actually damage both / kill one and set up weakened copies instead of this speed 0 insanity.
Also it is possible to hit dobblegangsters on your very first node. They are bad enough with treasures, but as the starting fight unless you have a very specific comp (fire/frost) you are practically garantued to lose at least two mercenaries if not more.
Agree.
“copying at speed 0” is meaningless, why not just start with 6 copies, BLZ can save money for add the “COPY” spell.
Fire has been the go-to for climbing since the beginning, basically. Especially since there is SOOO much farming to do, we have to pick the most efficient comp.
The bottom line literally is that even Fire comps have trouble with this dopple… thing. Ragnaros nuking for nearly 60 damage is not good enough many times… well then these nodes literally become landmines where other comps can’t pass-through.
I am not saying it is unbeatable, but Mercenaries requires extreme grinding, so I/We are multi-tasking and don’t have time to carefully plan every run just because of these trash mobs being harder than the boss and eliminating most comps.
P.S. I guess Frost has become good with this new release? Might have to try it out if it can keep up with fire’s efficiency.
Edit: I think my issue was I had one of the 3 Fires dead(Balinda/Ragnaros/Baron Geddon) a couple of times and was relying on the revive when I happened on these Guardians from Hell that did 300+ damage and wiped the rest of my team within a couple of turns, lol.
The Team was weaker due to the 13 or 16 new mercenaries getting added so I needed to carry their dead-weight on the team to do their tasks.
It is not entirely meaningless as it does waste a turn for them. But it copying the current minion is meaningless as 99% you won’t be able to interact with them until after the copying happens.