It was more balanced. PvP in 1.09 required more skill to actually be good, rather than teleporting and spamming 'Teeth' with your faggot Necro or Teleporting on top of someone and casting Blessed Hammer.
While both are counterable, 1.09 was more balanced for melee vs. casters. The only time it got unbalanced was when the bugged items appeared.
Also, due to the lack of synergies, character builds were more versatile, meaning the duels were a lot different.
In short, it takes away power from you, forcing you to become better at using your characters to achieve victory.
Voll If you think this is a legit thing i am soooo down to join wit you, how i miss the mass amounts of zon duels!!! and how good i was with my old school necro which actually required skill to win. But lemme get this straight this server is basically the 09 version of d2? And you just start a new accnt and play kinda like UsEast or UsWest? Sounds like this could be fuckin awesome or one huge scam, but volls if your down, im down.