My understanding of the AoE circles was that the 2nd yellow circle of an AoE isn't supposed to affect friendly units. I've seen a tip popup to this affect a few times.
However, with the Pernicious Cloud ability, allied targets entirely in the yellow circle are still affected.
In the image below, every enemy and ally of the caster is hit by the cloud, and suffers the debuff, including the bear on the far-left who is clearly outside of the circle.
The caster wasn't suffering any intellect affliction.