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There are a number of skills that provide benefits to a player "and their allies". Do any of these include creatures summoned by a witch doctor?

Examples:

  • Does a Monk heal affect summons?
  • Do non-witch doctor abilities buff them?
  • If you have two witch doctors in a party, can they buff each other's summons?
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    You could add followers abilities in your question as well.
    – Michel
    Commented May 15, 2012 at 12:44
  • I suggest you edit and make this question more general(and remove witch doctor tag) to all summons. I don't expect the witch doctor is unique.
    – EBongo
    Commented May 18, 2012 at 20:47
  • @EBongo Do other classes have summons also? For some reason I didn't think they did.
    – bwarner
    Commented May 18, 2012 at 21:01
  • The Monk at least has Mystic Ally. I don't know all classes that well, but I know of that one at least. diablowiki.net/Mystic_Ally
    – EBongo
    Commented May 18, 2012 at 21:05
  • Monk mantra effects for sure apply to WD summons; their distinctive graphics is applied on the ground of summons and I also experiment directly that their effects work. For other effects and WD combination in party I cannot answer, but I can put a bounty, I am also interested in this.
    – Drake
    Commented May 23, 2012 at 15:51

1 Answer 1

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What we're discussing here is whether or not Shared Ally Effects extend out to your Witch Doctor's summoned creatures and if they stack.

First I'll generalize and say that this applies to all summons that have the same mechanics as the Witch Doctor's summons. A Demon Hunter's summons work differently and are not affected, for example.

Shared ally effects are skills and abilities that you and your allies can benefit from while fighting in the same area. Stacking different abilities between classes provides great advantage to a group.

A good list of abilities that provide shared ally effects is here, you will note that all classes and all follower types have an opportunity to provide some sort of effect.

SAEs do not consider the source of the ability, only whether the ability is eligible to provide a shared benefit. So having 2 Witch Doctors providing effects makes no difference to the question of whether the buff they provide is eligible. So yes, Witch Doctors can buff each others summons.

So which are eligible and do they stack? In general buffs always stack if they are eligible to be shared. A buff becomes ineligible if it is identical to an already provided buff, ie identical buffs do not stack. You can freely have multiple, different buffs active simultaneously.

Finally it is important to realize that followers and some summons (as above) are being treated in the same way that your human party members are being treated with respect to being enhanced by the party's SAEs.

This is being played most widely with the Monk's mantras, but is certainly not limited to them. This battle.net thread talks about a 2 WD 2 Monk team build to exploit this approach to the maximum benefit.

This approach is entirely consistent with Blizzard's co-op multiplayer goals.

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