Diablo – What counts as knockbacks for Strongarm Bracers

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.

From the standpoint of your weapon: Weapon Damage is king. Above all else, you want the highest possible amount of raw damage and DPS possible. Beyond that, you'll want to take a look at this formula to understand the value of other stats.

In short: at low levels, nothing is going to beat raw +Damage on any slot where you can get it (Rings, Neck, Offhand). As you increase in level, you'll eventually reach a point of inflection where the multiplicative scaling gained from adding +Dex is more valuable than the straight + Damage. This point of inflection will vary with other stats, and particularly with the base DPS of your weapon - your best bet is to simply keep an eye on the +Damage portion of the tooltip when comparing items.

As for stats like Crit and Attack Speed, the same basic rules apply. In general, .1 attack speed is worth 10 Dex, but this ignores the defensive benefits of Dexterity, and since attack speed bonuses are provided as percentage multipliers, you'll need to do some math. You'll need to run similar calculations with +Crit and +Crit Damage, but in general, unless you use skills or passives that rely on Crit, you can assume those stats are less valuable than the others.

Really, all of this comes back to one key point: Trust the Damage Stat on your Character Sheet. So long as you're doing the basics right (using a level appropriate, high DPS weapon), it isn't going to steer you far wrong. Beyond that, Dexterity is King, and everything else depends entirely on the magnitude of the stat that you get. An item with +Crit might be better than an item with +Attack Speed, based purely on how much of it is there.