Diablo – what crusader skills benefit from health globe bonus affix

This has been completely changed for the 1.04 patch on 8/21/2012.

For Zombie Dogs:

• They get a base amount based on the level of the witch doctor (10,000 for level 60)

• They get an additional 35% of the witch doctor's health

• They have an inherent effect that limits the max damage they can take in a single hit to 10,000 * the % of damage that is not prevented by the witch doctor's armor and resistance

For Gargantuan:

• Gets a base amount based on the level of the witch doctor (exact value is unknown)

• Gets an additional 35% of the witch doctor's health

• At level 60, gets an additional 50% of the witch doctor's health (for a total of 85%?)

• Has the same max damage effect as mentioned for Zombie Dogs

Here is an example of the new system from Blizzard

Let's set up an example using a level 60 witch doctor. Let’s say this witch doctor has 32,000 Life, 45% mitigation from Armor, and 30% mitigation from Resistances. (For clarity, this means that 55% of incoming damage gets past the player’s Armor, and 70% of the incoming damage gets past Resistances.)

• The base Life of a level 60 Zombie Dog is 10,000 Life
• With scaling, each Zombie Dog will have 21,200 Life (10,000 [base] + 32,000 * 35% [scaling])
• The maximum damage the Zombie Dog can take in a single hit will be 3850 Life (10,000 [base] * 55% [damage not mitigated by armor] * 70% [damage not mitigated by Resistances])
• Ignoring passive Life regeneration, this means each Zombie Dog will always be able to take at least 5.5 hits (21,200 [Life] / 3850 [damage])

Blizzard has recently published some data on this on the official guide:

• Normal monsters: chance to drop a health globe on death varies by monster type.
• Champion monsters: 60% chance to drop a health globe at 50% life and on death.
• Rare monsters: 100% chance to drop a health globe at 50% life and on death.

In addition, with the superunique and act bosses, you can look at their health bar to see when a globe might drop:

The triangles in monsters’ health bars represent points where they might drop a globe

Regarding the "varying chance" normal monsters have to drop, typically the stronger the individual monster is, the higher the chance. Monsters that come in groups and are easily felled have a relatively low chance of dropping, while solitary, tough monsters - for example living trees, or those huge wall-climbing siege monsters in Act 3, are guaranteed to drop a globe upon death.