Guide Level 9 Dueling

Intro
This guide is to give an overview of level 9 dueling and the different items, builds and strategies involved. I’ve had a lot of people ask, “Why level 9?” For starters there is no teleport, which typically puts you in a punch-for-punch melee battle. There are a limited number of available skills, stats and items so it forces you to be more resourceful and strategic. The most common LLD (low level duel) bracket is level 18, however I have always enjoyed duels at the earliest level possible.

Builds
Not all classes are created equal, and like high level duels, there are those who seem much better equipped for battle. I will give an overview of each class and the builds I have used for level 9 duels. The skill point allocations can vary based on your skill and play style, but once you’ve hell rushed your dueler and done all skill reward quests you will have 20 points to use. Physical damage builds tend to be the strongest as DR is hard to come by at such a low level, and resist is easy to find.

Amazon
Jabazon
This is my personal favorite, and I feel it is the most capable dueler at this level. It has decent damage and survivability coupled with good speed. Critical Strike, Dodge and Inner Sight are where you want to put your points, 1 to Jab should be enough.
Poison Java
This build is easily negated with the poison resist + length reduce from Death’s set. It can be powerful if your opponent doesn’t have Death’s gloves, but otherwise it’s useless.
Bowazon
A pure bowazon is tough to win with. A 6os bow with max damage jewels is viable, but the str/dex requirements are far too high, forcing you to sacrifice vita points and life charms.

Assassin
Tigersin
This build can be extremely powerful, but not so reliable. When properly geared and played, it may very well be the strongest at this level. Just make sure you have plenty of AR (Angelic’s is level 12 so forget about that) because if you miss when releasing charges it may cost you the duel. If you keep a Cleglaw’s sword on switch for releasing charges, you can deal some serious damage if DS hits. BoS and PsyHammer can be useful for controlling your opponent’s movements if they like to run a lot.
Trapsin
Don’t even bother. Resist is too easy to come by and your damage won’t be high enough to penetrate (lol) it.

Barbarian
Bash Barb
This is the only viable Barb build IMO. Double Swing isn’t strong enough to sacrifice the shield. This build can be a tank that will endlessly frustrate your opponent. It can achieve high damage output, high life and defense making it quite the formidable build. If you time the bashes right your opponent won’t have a chance to hit you. Speed is the only thing it lacks, and against Jabazons or Tigersins it can be the deciding factor in the fight.

Druid
The druid is awful at level 9 duels. The only build worth trying is Firestorm/Molten Boulder but all it takes is a pair of Hotspurs to render you ineffective.

Necromancer
Like the druid, the necromancer is just not well equipped for level 9. If re-casting bone armor is allowed then it has a chance, but it will be a war of attrition as its damage is just awful. Poison dagger could work if your opponent doesn’t have Death’s.

Paladin
Smiter
The good old smiter is viable at any and every level. A consistent, reliable, but not overwhelming fighter; it’s capable of taking on any build and holding its own. Even considering CB is nerfed in PVP, you will need it (Crushflange or The Gnasher) to win. As with the Bash Barb, speed is your downfall.
Sacrifice Pally
This is a very strong and underrated build for level 9. A lot of people avoid it due to the self-inflicted damage, but this is a mistake. The amount of damage it can output is rivaled only by the Tigersin, although the Sac Pally deals it every swing, not just on charge release. It’s capable of having such high defense that you will do more damage to yourself then your opponent will, if they can hit you at all. Paladins have the distinct advantage of having +skills on a scepter, and great bonuses on a shield.

Sorceress
Similar to the druid and necromancer, I would avoid the sorc at level 9. No spells are strong, and all are easily mitigated.

Items

Weapons

• Crushflange – Good for smiter with CB
• Cleglaw’s – 50% DS is nice, but sockets are nicer. Good for switch to release Tigersin charges or finish off a wounded foe faster
• The Gnasher – Good for smiters also with CB, OW and str
• 6os war axe – Great for sac pally and bash barb. Fill with nice jewels and you can get some serious damage
• 5os war scepter – Also great for sac pally if it has +sacrifice and might/defiance
• Throwing spear – Weapon of choice for jabazon, ideally find an eth rare with CTC amp and replenish. Amp dmg is a crucial mod to have here
• Bows – Can be useful as a switch to chip away at a tough enemy. If they don’t use Death’s you can fill it with 20psn dmg jewels
• Claws – Look for 3os with +tiger strike

Helms

• 3 socket Crown/Mask – This is typically the best choice. Find one with 15ed and fill with some nice jewels.
• Biggin’s Bonnet – Decent choice until you can find some good jewels
• Sigon’s – With the other set pieces it can be decent
• Barbarian Helms – Look for a 3os helm with +bash and shout/weapon mastery
• Druid Pelts – If you insist on making a druid, look for a 3os with +firestorm and molten boulder

Armors

• 4 socket Ancient Armor (or Gothic Plate) – High defense, high str requirement. If you can find some nice -15req/+ jewels than this is by far the best choice
• 3 socket Breast Plate – Lower str requirements, easy to find. Decent alternative to Ancient Armor if you don’t have the str for it
• Sigon’s – See above in Helmets

Gloves

• Death’s – Completely negates poison builds, provides IAS with set bonus from belt. Best choice in most situations
• Cleglaw’s – Knockback + Slow Target can be useful in certain situations. If you use a bow then I highly recommend these
• Bloodfist – Great overall gloves
• Sigon’s – See above

Boots

• Hsarus – FRW and FRes, nothing special but they work for everyone with low str req
• Sigon’s – See above
• Rare – Your best bet is to try and find some really nice rares

Belts

• Death’s – Almost a necessity. If your opponent has any cold damage, wear this or you will most likely lose.
• Sigon’s – See above

Shields

• Pelta Lunata – Good shield, easy to find
• Umbral Disk – Also good, better blocking % than Pelta
• Rare bone shield – Best choice if you get a good one. I gambled an iLvl 20 with FHR/Deflecting/Life/Res/2os for 5000 gold
• Vulpine Bone Shield of Deflection - Great shield with DTM and deflecting, can be bought at vendors and made 2os by Larzuk. Thanks to @Light86 for pointing that out
  
• Sigon’s – See above
• Paladin Shields – Look for rondache with Knight’s Auto Mod (101-121 AR / 51-65ED) and 4os

Rings

• Nagelring – Try to find with 75ar
• Rare – Look for max damage, AR, str, life rep, life, etc

Amulet

• Civerb’s – Life rep and mana regen
• Rare - Look for max damage, AR, str, life rep, life, etc

Jewels

Make sure you’re aware of the ed/max jewel bug.
I’m not going to list all the prefixes and suffixes but I will list some of the most useful

Prefix:
Rusty – 20ed
Carbuncle – 5max
Scarlet – 4min
Tin – 40ar
Dun – 12% DTM

Suffix:
of Wrath – 9max
of Daring – 3dex
of Freedom – 15% requirement

The most commonly used jewel is the 9max damage. You can (not easily) find Carbuncle Jewel of Wrath with 14max, which is the best you can get for max damage.

Charms

The most likely charms you will want are:

• Small charms - +1 str or dex
• Large charms – 15 hp
• Grand charms – 12FHR

Ideally they would have 2nd mods, but plain will do to start.


Where Do I Find Items?
For some items you will need to find it at an appropriate iLvl for max sockets. This list tells you at what iLvl each item can achieve any number of sockets.
My favorite farming spots with their aLvl:

• Normal cows (28)
• Normal arcane (14)
• Normal tombs (17)
• Normal catacombs (11-12)

Gambling is a good source of rares and rings/amulets. Keep in mind the level of character you gamble with affects the iLvl of the item gambled.

Conclusion
I find LLD to be very fun, and a different challenge than typical PVP. I hope you find this guide to be resourceful, and hopefully it will motivate you to make your own level 9 dueler. If you have questions, want to inspect my LLDs, or have your own level 9 and want to duel then /w *TimmyDeezNutz.

 

Oh, i miss my good old vlld9 sac pala... I ve been called hacker so many times, while smashing random lvl 18 chars with it Unfortunately, i have no playable chars at SC atm, and with my luck for dropping decent LCs and jewels...

 

Yeah start lld section here!

Btw one addition: The Necromancer is actually one of the best lld Chars. You need a scepter with zeal/smite/sacrifice charges, use clay golem for slow and AD for dmg
ne of the best lld chars I ever played.

But yeah equipping chars here with eth selfrep rares & max stats magics will be really hard to find all those stuff to build good chars...

/e: You can actually try to shop some items at vendors. For example Vulpine Bone Shield of Deflection (7-12dmg goes to mana and 20/30 block) Larzuk can give you up to 2 sox then.

 

I've read about some seriously good Necros with sac charge scepters, but I've never made one myself or dueled one, and typically bone armor is only allowed to be cast once, making the Necro quite squishy. If I come across one of these scepters I will have to try it for myself and maybe it'll change my mind.

I forgot about that shield, I added it to the guide with credit to you. As far as finding gear, it's not much different than looking for high level gear. I found a non-eth throwing spear with CTC amp, max dmg, ED, cold dmg and +stack in normal cows after only a couple days of farming. It's not the best, but it works very well. It's all luck, just like high level gear.

 

How much would said gear be worth on the market? Just curious because I sometimes find low level rares that seem pretty nice. I've always wanted to try some LLD.

 

There really isn't a market for this gear, so to speak. It's basically up to buyer & seller to agree on something because there's no set prices due to not a lot of people looking for, or offering most of this stuff. I would recommend saving the LLD gear you find, then /w me when you're ready for a duel.

 

Alright, sounds like a plan. I'll start collecting.

 

Do you bring that char allover the hell to get extra stats from quests or just normal difficulty chars are legit?

 

Usually its allowed to make them hell lvl 9 chars for those extra stats/skills quests.
The duels will be held in normal difficulty.

 

Pretty cool/decent guide I'll note... A 3.99/5 star rating based on content and efficiency. The idea of 9's viable to pvp popularity is kinda cool but like self-induced through the words of the guide itself, there's only afew seriously viable lvl 9 builds (especially when one person's using one of those few) it's just very scarce in meat and i feel like 18's or even 24's are pretty fun and intuitively more interesting in possibility than 9's and are still considered a low-level bracketing in my opinion. Idk to each their own, but 9's kindaaa too low to be very compelling - but has afew cool builds.

 

On blizzard's bnet servers there have been alot of lowlevel duels. Basicly lvl9/18/30/49 were those caps. (sometimes lvl63or64 Sins for chaos WW duels, but not really existent)
The idea of those level caps were based on:
Skill Levels -> playable builds
Equipment -> affix caps

People did workout "good mannered" balanced duel rules, like Assasins were not allowed to max out burst of speed or Necro's to cast Bone Armor many times and things like that. It would be hard to build up a whole lowlevel pvp community on this server but maybe some people are interested in it. I would join but I wont have enough time to be very active though and it's hard to find duel times with people comming from different countrys/continents on this server

 

Well, I am really interested in it, but first I have to gear up some farming char etc.. Since I have 0 stuff on SC

 

I can help some ppl out maybe sharing some knowledge about affix on rares and itemlevels to spawn those items:
Large Charms 15life -> Arcane Sanctuary Normal + Canyon of Magi
The monsterlevels are not binded to area levels and so arent the treassure classes in Normal difficulty. Hence Arcane Sanctuary + Canyon will drop ilvl19 items and these are the lowest lvl charms of possible to spawn 15life (the chance is actually high to get 10-15lifers, namely 1:10!).
I dont know good places for jewels, but basicly ilvl = alvl for jewels so if you find a place where many lvl13 jewels drop (namely lvl13 monster areas) let us know
Still I think best places to farm Jewels is propably normal cows. (Also good for starters selling jewels + pgs)
Best rare drops depend on this qlvl of desired items, anyways best places are travincal + council at mephi and (depending on the base item) Eldrich/Shenk/Pindleskin.
If you look for something specific I suggest using an affixcalculator.
But keep in mind Treassure Classes are different to monsterlevels in Normal so for example you can find throwing spears(qlvl29) at travincal (mlvl23+TC30).

/e: I typed to fast here. You need ilvl13 jewels to get 20%ed + maxdmg.

 

Everything you need for a starter sorc can be had free on SC.

I must say, I'm impressed with how much you know about VLLD. How come you don't make a char yourself?

 

As I said I did play vlld in blizz bnet and some of my friends there helped me alot sharing knowledge. I just started on this server and currently trying to equip 1 or 2 highlevel pvp chars.
Well, and I am not that kind of guy who plays with "random or standard" equipment. I'm currently spending alot of time crafting some useful gear which nobody has on the server. I've talked with one or two guys who play pvp here about crafting/farming rares and so on... I guy was impressed what I told him and he gave me 20 ber/zods for free.
But those runes are more or less worthless to me and him. I use them to buy craft ingredients and some farming gear now to become more "efficient". Even if I had 1000+ zod runes they would be useless because I cant buy items which nobody has and doesnt exist here...
And a last word about farming, afixes, itemlevels and so on... as a very experienced crafter I basicly know all "useful" affixes and there level caps, alvl, frequency, and stuff like that. It's just knowledge I aquired the past 10years playing/trading on bnet