Median XL News, May 2025

I just remembered that the summoning skills: Summon Fallen, Summon Shock Beast, Summon Daystar, Summon Shredder, Summon Bane Monster, do not follow the summoner when he moves, and are also very weak.

I think its time to talk about holy melee paladin. Most of the item are dead for this kind of build long time ago. There's no good 1 and 2 hands weapon for this paladin , also Barghest's Howl is not good enought for bound item. You can add to it 100% wpd and 5-10% DS (varries) at the moment even paladin set helmet is better tha this item < Cinadide's Bellows.
Theres alot of useless skills in his tree as well , no passive or good bonuses for life / stats or % DS.
There is one good Passive skill which can be very good for this build.

Brutality : Max skill base leve 5
+ 1% Maximum elemental resist
+ 3% Deadly Strike per base level (max 15%)
- 3% Maximum Block rate per base level (-15% in total)

Upgrade for this skill :
Maximum Base level 1
1 Hand Weapon Path
Remove all the penalties block rate from the main skill
2 Hand Path
+ 10% Deadly Strike , but lower your Strength by 25%

Passive SKill : Defensive Aura
Maximum skill Level 5

One Hand Path - Gives 2% life and 5% Elemental damage per Base level.

2 Hand Path - Gives 200 life per base level and 20% Total character defence.

Buff SKill : Holy Shield

Maximum Base skill Level 10 - Bonus apprear only when you use a shild.
SKill Duration 300 Seconds + 100% Duration when using an Apple

Gives you 20% Avoid damage and 100% Total Character defence when activated.
- 15% Maximum life at the start , but when you max this skill to 10 points - 5% penalty only.

Relics : Great hunt relic up + 2 Projectile up from + 1
Relic : Bladestorm can be used with all one hand sword weapons.
Relic : Carnage can be used with all one hand weapons.
Carnage yellow text bonus fire damage removed.
Relic Teleport has no cooldown now , but cursed you with - 40% Physical resist
Total Character defence 0 when you equipped.
Relic Cherubim +(10 to 16) to Cherubim up from +(6 to 13).
No longer gives flat bonus % strength
Relic : Eviscerate: +2 Projectile up from + 1
Relic Immersion: 10% Chance to Trigger Additional Projectile up from 7%
+(12 to 21) to Immersion
+100-200 to Mana up from 100

I also remembered that in Project Diablo 2, the "return damage" property works not only with melee damage but also with all types of attacks (including projectiles and spells). Incorporating that property improvement into the Median XL would make more builds viable.

magz_ wrote:Did somebody say poison

gavin did ask me what skills would benefit from breaking wdm cap so i think he's cooking something up

metasequoia wrote:oh any someone explain vampiric icon to me. i know it enables vampiric strike, but how tf does it work and why is it useless? until then, i am happy clicking prismatic and wotr on her

if anything walks across the circle they take like some tiny amount of damage but it has a bajillion % leech built in (because "life" is a valid "element" for skill damage) so you restore like 500 hp per frame

Maidstone wrote:I think its time to talk about holy melee paladin. -snip-

HMP has several good weapons, that's not his problem.

Oriflamme

Oriflamme
Paladin Clubs, Paladin Maces, Paladin Hammers
'TahaQorZod'
Runeword Level: 100
Additional Dexterity Damage Bonus: 0.078125%
80% Attack Speed
+(111 to 140) to Maximum Damage
Adds 400-500 Magic Damage
-(30 to 35)% to Enemy Fire Resistance
+(172 to 200)% Enhanced Damage
5% Deadly Strike
Slow Target 10%
+200 to Strength
+200 to Dexterity
+15 Life after each Kill

Angel Star,

Malleus Maleficarum

Malleus Maleficarum
Hand of God (Sacred)
Two-Hand Damage: (260 - 312) to (577 - 740)
(Paladin Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 832
Item Level: 120
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.16 per Strength)%
Amazing Grace
If you have at least 450% Damage to Demons
+10% Fire Absorb
+10% Cold Absorb
+10% Lightning Absorb
+25% Deadly Strike
6% Chance to cast level 20 Widowmaker on Melee Attack
20% Chance to cast level 10 Thunder Hammer Nova on Melee Attack
+(315 to 425) to Maximum Damage
(100 to 200)% Bonus to Attack Rating
15% Life stolen per Hit
+(150 to 200)% Enhanced Damage
15% Chance of Crushing Blow
+1000 Defense
+100 Mana on Melee Attack
Fear No Evil
Socketed (6)

,

Gotterdammerung

Gotterdammerung
Great Axe (Sacred)
Two-Hand Damage: 496 to 673
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 5400
Item Level: 120
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.16 per Strength)%
Mega Impact
Thunderfury
Area Effect Attack
50% Attack Speed
Adds 250-400 Damage
+200% Enhanced Damage
Requirements +800%
Ragh nar Rook
Socketed (6)

.

Adjudicator

Adjudicator
Goedendag (Sacred)
One-Hand Damage: 53 to 54
(Paladin Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 574
Item Level: 120
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.14 per Strength)%
Holy: Holy Fire Deals 4.5% of Strength as More Total Damage (max 250%)
Unholy: Blood Thorns: +40% Damage Multiplier
Nephalem: +25% Total Vessel Damage Bonus from Passives
+1 to Paladin Skill Levels
Adds 175-325 Fire Damage
Adds 1-600 Lightning Damage
Adds 200-250 Cold Damage
+800 Poison Damage over 1 seconds
-(15 to 25)% to Enemy Elemental Resistances
Socketed (3)

and

Venom Sting

Venom Sting
Holy Lance (Sacred)
Two-Hand Damage: (132 - 147) to (580 - 605)
(Paladin Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 514
Item Level: 120
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.16 per Strength)%
Amazing Grace
10% Chance to cast level 50 Punishers on Striking
+(2 to 3) to Paladin Skill Levels
60% Attack Speed
+350 to Maximum Damage
150% Bonus to Attack Rating
30% Life stolen per Hit
+(171 to 200)% Enhanced Damage
+100% to Poison Spell Damage
-(50 to 70)% to Enemy Poison Resistance
+(50 to 100) to all Attributes
Socketed (6)

aren't terrible, either, they just aren't absolutely godlike.

His problem is that Retaliate hasn't kept up with the powercreep of the rest of the game. Most of the "aoe" melee attacks have this issue - Parasite has gotten to be pretty okay, but when's the last time someone felt really good about using Retaliate? Earthquake? Noctule? Iron Spiral?

For the actual suggestions you have... handing out free max res and DS like candy is a bandaid fix that points to larger issues with the stats that the content expects vs. what you're actually able to build for. But, well, that's a huge undertaking that I didn't manage to really tackle while I was around, I don't expect it to be solved overnight.

Brutality -- what's the point of reducing maxblock just to give it back? you can't block with 2h in mxl, that's just an anni thing.
also, reducing strength on the better-scaling weapons is just a big feelsbad, don't do that. nerfs life total too, don't forget Lionheart exists.

Defensive Aura -- this is just the stats from Lionheart but worse because you only get half of them depending on your weapon type? you're allowed to ask for buffs, no need to reinvent the wheel

Holy Shield -- what if instead of an extra skill, Sacred Armor (or whatever the heck its name is now) gets +120s duration synergy if you have points in Lionheart

Maidstone wrote:Relic : Bladestorm can be used with all one hand sword weapons.

+1, somewhere in my dev notes there was an idea to just build this into the skill, and give melee sorc a passive that replaces strength bonus with dex bonus for regular swords.

technically a strict replacement isn't possible, but with a hidden stat you can detect normal swords, subtract 11%/14% strength as WPD, then add 11%/13% dex as WPD. you might even be able to do it with a weapon mastery and skip the hidden stat, but i remember having a hard time getting those to actually work correctly.

ofc there's a problem with that, and that's the fact that warp blades have utterly bonkers stats, they're almost as good as generic 2h swords

As one of the oldest gamers (64) let me tell you this: The whole team have my fully respect for working FOR FREE for the whole community of us gamers, thank you so much.
And for this i dont care how long i have to wait for another great job of you all.
Love and greetings from Nurenburg, Germany

no diy is good!

jsvc3634 wrote:no diy is good!

Hello, What do do you mean?

I want to voice my opinion as unpopular as it probably is.

I have played median for a very long time... since probably 2009 or so. Theres no doubt this game has changed some for the better and some for the worse. Admittedly, I didn't play last season so maybe some of my frustrations with Median have been fixed. Many years ago there was levels to median that kind of made sense to me as players abilities aren't all the same. There were "boosters" helping noob characters level, rushing them while simultaneously farming. There were "farmers" grinding items that you could trade for for the crazy build ideas you had. There were "Charmers" farming those pesky charms that you didn't want to deal with, either because your character wasn't great for it or you just didn't have the knowledge or care to learn the fight. Then there were your average players, making 3-4 characters every season trying "new builds" which were likely o-skill builds, off-meta builds, or the very fun rainbow ctc skill builds. Back when you could lag the entire game out just by doing cows. I get it, this was far from a polished game but man was it fun. I used to look forward to the new weird builds people would come up with that was very useless for certain things, but very fun and dazzling for farming. Which is what the majority of the player base was doing. Farming those key items that everyone wanted, in hopes they would hit the jackpot.

I could invite friends to play median in those times. I could change my p amys into xp pots and boost them. I could go into my stash and from all the random uniques put them something together that they could start farming cows with. I would keep a few characters at lvl 40 to bump my friends in the off chance I could get them to try the game. I knew well that if they had to level for several hours, they wouldn't stick with it. I could get someone started in just a couple hours and turn them loose into what would turn into hours of trying random crazy things to make a build that they were proud of. Heck back then the non-ladder population was higher than ladder. I feel like what many of the people who played years ago knew as median is gone. In my opinion, the development has gone more towards the very skilled player base rather than the average player base. This mod has gone from one of the biggest multi skill layered community D2 mods to an online single player game. It's practically worse to play in a team than in a party. Admittedly, I'd imagine now the worst player in median is 10x's better than the average player from 2009 but my point remains the same.

We have to keep in mind that no matter how much is changed this is still a D2 base. Theres only so much difficulty you can add to the game before it turns into what it basically is now. Do this or get one shot. Play this meta build or be lackluster. I understand that is part of developing something, you have to constantly try to improve it or risk withering away to stalemate.

TLDR: The goal of median now is to hold the player and keep them busy on the same character for the 3 month+- season. I think a lot of us really enjoyed being able to make many characters with many builds and "testing" its ability. It was much easier to get new people into it when the pace was much faster.

Tasidon wrote:I want to voice my opinion as unpopular as it probably is.

I have played median for a very long time... since probably 2009 or so. Theres no doubt this game has changed some for the better and some for the worse. Admittedly, I didn't play last season so maybe some of my frustrations with Median have been fixed. Many years ago there was levels to median that kind of made sense to me as players abilities aren't all the same. There were "boosters" helping noob characters level, rushing them while simultaneously farming. There were "farmers" grinding items that you could trade for for the crazy build ideas you had. There were "Charmers" farming those pesky charms that you didn't want to deal with, either because your character wasn't great for it or you just didn't have the knowledge or care to learn the fight. Then there were your average players, making 3-4 characters every season trying "new builds" which were likely o-skill builds, off-meta builds, or the very fun rainbow ctc skill builds. Back when you could lag the entire game out just by doing cows. I get it, this was far from a polished game but man was it fun. I used to look forward to the new weird builds people would come up with that was very useless for certain things, but very fun and dazzling for farming. Which is what the majority of the player base was doing. Farming those key items that everyone wanted, in hopes they would hit the jackpot.

I could invite friends to play median in those times. I could change my p amys into xp pots and boost them. I could go into my stash and from all the random uniques put them something together that they could start farming cows with. I would keep a few characters at lvl 40 to bump my friends in the off chance I could get them to try the game. I knew well that if they had to level for several hours, they wouldn't stick with it. I could get someone started in just a couple hours and turn them loose into what would turn into hours of trying random crazy things to make a build that they were proud of. Heck back then the non-ladder population was higher than ladder. I feel like what many of the people who played years ago knew as median is gone. In my opinion, the development has gone more towards the very skilled player base rather than the average player base. This mod has gone from one of the biggest multi skill layered community D2 mods to an online single player game. It's practically worse to play in a team than in a party. Admittedly, I'd imagine now the worst player in median is 10x's better than the average player from 2009 but my point remains the same.

We have to keep in mind that no matter how much is changed this is still a D2 base. Theres only so much difficulty you can add to the game before it turns into what it basically is now. Do this or get one shot. Play this meta build or be lackluster. I understand that is part of developing something, you have to constantly try to improve it or risk withering away to stalemate.

TLDR: The goal of median now is to hold the player and keep them busy on the same character for the 3 month+- season. I think a lot of us really enjoyed being able to make many characters with many builds and "testing" its ability. It was much easier to get new people into it when the pace was much faster.

None of this makes any sense

Siosilvar wrote:His problem is that Retaliate hasn't kept up with the powercreep of the rest of the game. Most of the "aoe" melee attacks have this issue - Parasite has gotten to be pretty okay, but when's the last time someone felt really good about using Retaliate? Earthquake? Noctule? Iron Spiral?

How about buffing EQ to 200% + 150% from 80% + 180% weapon dmg and Retaliate to 350% from 140% after reaching lvl 140? Then I guess we dont even need to change anything about their skill trees or gears to make holy melee pal and EQ barb better in late game?

I really think that hmp with Retaliate needs to be given 350% weapon dmg to behave good enough in t6+ lab if no passives buff or skill tree changed. I mean no super relics, no op scrolls, no op stone charms, ofc. Just a regular hmp using Retaliate, he has to have 350% weapon dmg version Retaliate to be an Okay lab farmer in recent patches.