Weapon damage vs weapon speed. Balance or game design issue.

[Sheff]

I've found that weapon damage is just added to your base damage without any multiplier and base character damage is even more than weapon damage. Considering all above it appears that weapon attack speed is primary for DPS rather than weapon damage itself. This fact leads to very poor weapon variety during the game. While running with Assasin you get your first scimitar with 1-12 lighting damage, and there is a big chance that it's your best weapon until you get Izual's rapire. Once you get Izual's rapire you are stuck with is for a really long time. Currently i'm running Assasin through Nighmare's Caves, and there was no any weapon that could compite with Izual's rapire. Not even close. And Izual's rapire has just 3-21 damage.
I think it's a problem. And the root of the problem is that base character damage is much heavier than weapon damage, because no multiplers is applied for weapon damage.

[carpediem86]

I am no expert on this game, but it seems to be like you say. "very fast" attack speed weapons are almost always best. They also do stun lock easier. But this game is so good now with the Belzebub mod anyway. I got to Hell now with 1 character and to the last difficulty with two.

[neversun]

I agree. Played with Rigue in Iratha Set, than got M'Avina diadem (28% IAS) and tried it. Got less DPS, less resists, less stats, but crowd control become better and was dying much less.