TLDR : Approach to Rules for MLD in D2r. Part 1.
In D2LOD it can be stated that the rules for MLD (Dueling in the Level 49 Bracket) heavily favoured bowa's. This can be evidenced by the % win rate of Bowa's in the tournaments held since 2009-2017 (they won 10 of 22 tournaments
https://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=77689883&f=143). There are alot of reasons for this. For some builds it pays to be itemlame (barb, ama) while for other classes you can only get so many upgrades (ESFB for instance its really only the circlet and amulet that sets them apart). Some thoughts on the tournaments & classes that won them - All the winners of the tournaments were exceptional players and, barring anti-char match ups, could kill each other. Some players championed certain builds and some players championed multiple builds.
Amazons - Myself, Snatch and then later Obstgarten were the 3 best equipped zons (prior to 2009 Alongcomesmary had the best zon). By the end of D2LOD Obstgarten had the best zon with the most itemlame MLD shadow bow ever seen. That + skill equated to results.
Libby - Leevolka was without exception, the best libby player we ever saw on EU either at LLD or MLD, most especially in TvT. Licio Glax was also a very good Libby player. with the changes to D2R the likelyhood is I will have to increase their max allowable Fire res.
ESFB - Octogenarian won 1 tournament with ESFB. Very aggressive playstyle, auto loses vs trappers and vs skilled players that make him impatiant. Harabec would to my mind be consider a more all round player on ESFB. We had several good ESFB's over the years. In D2R I am reducing the allowed fire res on Bowa's from 85 to 80 in order to see what this does for the specific match up ESFB vs Bowa. By the end of D2LOD all the bowa's had rare javs and Lightning Bolt melted ESFB's that stomped.
Nec - Perserker[PVP] - Perz did not play alot of the tournaments but both he and Harabec were able to demonstrate the viability of Nec's in MLD. The expected damage boost in 2.4 will hopefully make them even more viable.
EsLight -Harabec - Alex was the best all round player that we ever saw in MLD (lee would be a close second, and there was no 3rd player) and demonstrated the robustness of the rules by being in contention with a variety of classes (Nec, Sorc, Barb, Ama)
V/T - Derpate - Without a doubt the only skilled V/T player we ever saw in MLD. Derpate single handedly made the build viable. Kudos to him on this.
Barb - We had 4-5 very good barb players. Harabec, Lee, Chris were all excellent barbs. The FRW limits and desync made them competitive. the removal of desync in D2r makes sorc's a hard counter now. To implement teleport charges is a slippery slope and I would rather either host exceptional tournaments without sorcs sometimes, then allow teleport. Putting rules on sorc's "must stay inscreen vs barb" wont really change the result but will give barbs a chance.
EsBlizz - Lam3r and Maximus_Le_Roi were the 2 best Blizz players. Jim was also excellent but he did not register to (m)any? of the tournaments. The likelyhood is that Barb and co will have no stack limit vs them in future (chanceless vs them). A good blizz is incredibly hard to beat.
Trapper Addesmile won a MLD tournament with trapper but I would say that Harabec was the best trapper we saw at MLD. Amazons were a hard counter to trappers which is why we did not see many of them.
The class missing from the list is Tele Dudu. We had 2 players, twinsen and Lam3r, who were able to demonstrate how good this build was but they did not want to enter the tournaments for fear of getting the build nerfed. Both of those players were at the very top in terms of skill.