Do area dots cast by players stack in Diablo 3?

Question

I found a similar question to this, but I'm not sure the answer applies here.

The question asks if DOT damage stacks (specifically single target debuffs) and I'm wondering if area effects that deal DOT, like the poison trail left behind by the Witch Doctor's Zombie Charger or his Acid Cloud, can stack.

Enemies that take damage from these area skills aren't affected by a "debuff" which duration can be extended, so I'm thinking the area damage skills may stack where they overlap each other.

Please confirm/disprove my theory

Answer 1

This depends on the skill, as already said the Blizzard skill of the Wizard does NOT stack, it even says in the tooltip. But for example the Hydra with the Venom/Poison rune creates poison pools that do infact stack, that is why that skill is so vital especially in Inferno.

Answer 2

While area of effect spells may not stack with themselves (Wizard's Blizzard states this explicitly, in fact!), they always stack with each other.

It makes sense, really - if AoE didn't stack, multiplayer would be harder the more players you had (because all the AoE / DoTs would already exist).

There is a problem, however, in that DoTs, like the Witch Doctor's grasping hands, never show their damage. It may be hard to sanity check, but their health still goes down as expected. It's still there, just... hidden!

Answer 3

They stack. The HUD even shows the number of stack affecting you - look for the number over the debuff icon the shows up to the left of your resource globe.