Poison Creeper

[electricblue]

1. the damage is applied over ~dozen seconds, and can't be sped up
2. some critters will be highly resistant or immune to Rabies (also in werewolf form you can not easily use charges of Lower Resist)

Take, for example, the Hell Zombie Garden (Pindle's area)... you're in a tight space, and these guys hit hard, so you either want to control them (avoid getting hit in some way) or kill them very fast. Unfortunately they are 90% poison resistant and have many thousands of HP. A Holy Bolt Paladin (build) will also not be able to CC very well (where the wolf has lots of HP the Paly has lots of block, typically speaking, so both can tank, of course) but the Holy Bolts will tear individual undead up in a second or two.

some numbers here,

with an above average rabies attack, it takes 3 seconds to kill a hell zombie garden resident + rabies infects others in contact and also kills them in 3 secs.
ok a duration of 3 secs is very, very subjective, but this should't be so bad :)

also, it consumes little skill points and lets strong hybrids with fury or fire claws