I do not use the X pattern, because when I tried, and was watching, the heel was spending like 100th of a second on the hone, whilst the rest of the blade spent some time on the hone. I got the image of those razors you see with the toe 4/8, the center 5/8 and the heel still original 6/8. I do believe some fellow members tried to explain something about that, yet it still made no sense to me, therefore I choose to avoid it.
I guess its like most things, when at first there seems like only 1 way to do something, it becomes the accepted standard.