>>14908272
>Some people like Median XL but I think they're faggots.
Since June is LGBT Pride month, I suppose that's my cue.
I really liked both D2X and Median XL, but Median is definitely a major mod that changes the whole feel of the game. Not everyone who likes D2X will like Median, but if you do like it, there really is a lot to see and discover. Median is very fast-paced, both in terms of combat and how quickly you can powerlevel through the game if you want to rush, even in single player (I've heard there are multiplayer servers with a decent population of players, never tried them). Not that that's a problem, since there's a huge amount of end-game content for max level characters ("uberlevels"), and the mod is not exactly a cakewalk.
As an example, my favorite class in Median was the sorceress, which if you liked the D2X sorceress I would suggest playing a Median sorc since she's still basically just a spellcaster (although "enchant" skills are viable now). She has a mana spell skill tree now, and one of the spells is "mana sweep", where you do damage to everything on the screen (just about) proportional to how little mana you have (e.g. if you have max mana of 1000 and only 50 mana at the moment of casting mana sweep, you'll do damage to everyone proportional to the 950 mana you don't have). And if you do enough damage to a mob of monsters, it totally refills your mana orb, instantly. So you can just chew through enemies as fast as you can damage them, without worrying so much about potions.
I don't think Blizzard would ever add a skill like that to vanilla D2. So if you want to see Diablo on crack, Median is a good place to start.
Embed related is a Diablo 2 speedrunner with extensive knowledge of the vanilla game being talked through his first play of Median XL by an experienced player on a livestream he did. Not a bad way to find out what your first playthrough would be like without installing the actual mod.
Mod site with more info:
https://www.median-xl.com/