Creeping Death

Creeping Death

Creeping Death is a passive that drastically extends the duration of your damage-over-time effects — specifically Haunt, Locust Swarm and the damage boost from Piranhas. Instead of constantly refreshing these spells, their effect lingers long enough for you to focus on other things.

The slot is all but mandatory in any DoT-oriented witch doctor build. By applying the debuffs once and then keeping them up almost indefinitely, you maximise both damage and quality of life: you waste no casts on upkeep and can save Mana for other spells. Especially combined with the Piranhas damage amp, the near-unlimited duration becomes a major multiplier for your total output. In builds without these effects the passive does nothing.

What exactly gets extended

The passive covers three things, and the wording deserves a close read:

• Haunt lasts practically forever.
• Locust Swarm does too. Since the locusts jump to other nearby enemies, a long-lived swarm gradually spreads across whole packs.
• For Piranhas, only the damage amplification is extended, not the pool itself. The pool's poison damage ends as usual, but the amplifier stays on the enemies it touched.

Creeping Death only unlocks at level 64, right at the end of the leveling phase.

The typical partners

Locust Swarm and Piranhas appear directly in the partner list, since here the passive changes the skill itself. You tag enemies once as you enter an area and then turn your attention elsewhere. Soul Harvest and Spirit Walk round out the package as a buff and an escape, both running on cooldowns instead of Mana.

Among the passives, Confidence Ritual and Grave Injustice often sit alongside. Confidence Ritual boosts damage against nearby enemies, while Grave Injustice shortens all cooldowns and returns Mana when enemies die. Since Creeping Death cuts the Mana spent on reapplying effects, the three passives fit well into a setup built mainly on damage over time.

by eRnstl