Slows Target by %

September 2, 2026

Slows Target by % cuts the attack rate and velocity of whatever is struck by the listed percentage for around 30 seconds. Every attack that lands applies it, there is no chance roll, and it works through physical immunity because it deals no damage. What it does not do is scale the way the number on the item suggests: the effect is capped by what is being hit, and the cap against the units worth slowing is 50%.

The two caps

How much of the percentage is used depends entirely on the target:

90% against regular monsters, minions and pets
50% against players, mercenaries, champions, uniques, super uniques and act bosses

The second cap is the one that decides whether the property is worth a slot. Kelpie Snare carries 75%, the largest single value in the game, and against a boss exactly 50% of it lands. Against the same boss Blackbog's Sharp at 50% is identical, and a 20% source is not far behind. Anything past 50% only buys extra slow on regular monsters, which are rarely the reason a slow was wanted.

Percentages from several items on the same unit are added together before the cap is applied, so a belt, a shield and a weapon combine. That makes reaching 50% straightforward without giving up the weapon slot.

Stacking with other slows

Slows Target does not compete with the other sources of slow in the game, it adds to them. It sums with the attack rate and velocity reduction from cold length,

Decrepify and

Holy Freeze, and in Resurrected with

Impale as well.

Nothing can be pushed below 15% attack rate or 25% velocity no matter how many of them are applied at once. That floor is generous enough that a curse plus a Holy Freeze mercenary plus a slow weapon do genuinely land on top of each other rather than overwriting one another.

Note that a target under Cannot Be Frozen is still slowed normally. That property only blocks cold length, not this.

Duration and multiple attackers

A single application lasts roughly 30 seconds and is not cancelled early by the target attacking. Hitting the same monster again simply resets the timer, so in a normal fight the slow is permanent for as long as the fight lasts.

Slows applied by different units do not sum, and they do not cleanly replace one another either. The first percentage applied is the one used for velocity, and later applications only refresh how long that first percentage runs. The most recent percentage is the one used for actual attack rate. In a party where two characters carry different values, the client keeps showing the first percentage while the server uses the most recent, which desynchronises the attack rate of the monster until the last application expires.

Limitations

It is capped at 50% against every unit that is not a regular monster, minion or pet, which wastes most of a 75% roll where it matters.
It is applied by any melee or ranged attack except
Blade Sentinel,
Blade Shield and the additional arrows of
Multiple Shot, which only apply it with the original two.
When two weapons are equipped, only the value on the attacking weapon counts. The value on the other weapon is ignored entirely rather than averaged in.
Clay Golem is the one case where it works in reverse as well: the golem applies it to anything that hits it in melee, not just to what it hits.

Sources

Magic and rare items cannot roll it, so every source is a unique, a set item, a runeword or

Clay Golem. The golem version scales with skill level and only reaches its own 75% cap at skill level 60, which no realistic amount of gear provides; a golem in the twenties applies around 65%.

Cleglaw's Pincers at required level 4 is by far the earliest source and 25% is already half of the cap that applies to bosses, which is why the gloves stay useful well past the point where the rest of the set does not. Wearing the full Tancred's Battlegear set adds another 35% on top of whatever is equipped elsewhere.