Hit Blinds Target

September 1, 2026

Hit Blinds Target is a chance to cast the Necromancer curse

Dim Vision on the monster that was struck. A blinded monster has its awareness radius cut down to melee range and can only use its default attack, which makes this a crowd control property rather than a damage one.

What blinding does

The effect is a real cast of

Dim Vision, at a level between 1 and 20, and it does exactly what the curse does. The monster's awareness radius shrinks to its own melee range. It only attacks something that is already standing next to it, and while blinded it is limited to its default attack: no skills, no spells and no special abilities, so a Fallen Shaman stops reviving and a caster stops casting.

Blinding does not interrupt what the monster is already doing. It keeps executing its last action until its next AI check, so one that was walking towards the character carries on to the spot where the character was standing when the curse landed, unless something blocks it first.

Nothing about the monster's accuracy or damage changes. A blinded monster that still has a target inside its shortened radius attacks it with full chance to hit and full damage. The value of the property is that almost nothing stays inside that radius.

The chance to blind

It is not a flat chance and it is not a duration. The number on the item feeds into a formula that decides both whether the curse lands and what level it is cast at.

B is the sum of Hit Blinds Target on the gear, A the attacker level, D the monster level, and rand a random integer from 0 to 99
Value	Formula
Chance, melee	30 + 5 × (4B + A − D)
Chance, missile	(30 + 5 × (4B + A − D)) / 3
Dim Vision level	min( ⌊(chance − rand) / 5⌋ + 1, 20 )

Every point is worth 20 percentage points of chance, and every level the character has over the monster is worth 5 more. A single +1 used at the monster's own level already gives a 50% chance in melee, but only 17% on a bow or a throwing weapon, since missile attacks divide the result by three.

The same number also decides the level of the curse, so a large roll is not wasted once the chance passes 100%. Silence carries +33, which works out to a 690% chance at equal levels: it blinds on every hit that lands, always at level 20. Passion at +10 reaches level 20 as well. Woestave at +3 sits at a 90% chance and rolls a level that swings from 1 to 19 depending on the random number, and Deathspade at +1 blinds on about half of its hits at low levels.

How long it lasts

Dim Vision runs for 175 frames plus 50 per level above the first, which is 7 seconds at level 1 and 2 seconds more for each level after that, up to 45 seconds at level 20. Like every curse, the duration is halved in Nightmare and quartered in Hell, so that level 20 cast is worth about 22 seconds in Nightmare and about 11 in Hell.

That is what makes the large rolls disproportionately better. A +1 that happens to roll level 3 lasts a little under 3 seconds in Hell, while Silence blinds for 11 seconds on every single hit.

It is a curse

A monster can only carry one curse at a time, and Hit Blinds Target competes for that slot like any other.

Re-blinding a monster that is already blinded, whether by this property, by
Dim Vision itself or by a Druid
Raven, only overwrites the old cast if the new level is equal or higher. A weak roll cannot shorten a strong one.
Any other curse cast afterwards replaces it.
It cannot overwrite
Confuse or
Attract.
When the same item carries both Hit Blinds Target and Hit Causes Monster to Flee, the flee effect overwrites the blind on that attack.
With several chance-to-cast curses on the gear, the order they resolve in depends on the trigger event, the order the items were equipped and the internal skill order, not on anything visible in the tooltip.

Limitations

It only applies through a weapon attack that lands, so it does nothing for a caster.
It only blinds regular monsters and minions. Champions, uniques, super uniques and act bosses are unaffected, and on those targets it does not even overwrite a curse that is already on them.
When two weapons are equipped, the Hit Blinds Target on one of them does not apply to attacks made with the other.
A monster standing next to the character is still inside its shortened radius, so a melee build gets less protection out of it than a ranged one.
Blinded monsters stop pursuing, which scatters packs and pulls corpses away from a Necromancer relying on
Corpse Explosion or
Raise Skeleton.

Freezes Target and Slows Target answer the same problem by taking actions away from the monster instead of blinding it, and they keep it in place rather than letting it drift.

Sources

A socketed Sur Rune grants +1 on any weapon. Magic and rare items can never roll it, so every other source is a unique item, a set item or a runeword. Deathspade is the earliest at required level 9, and Silence has by far the largest value in the game at +33.