Weapon Damage

The majority of skills in Diablo 3 will do damage based on a % of the damage of the weapon that your character has equipped. Let's take Bash as our example Skill and Armageddon's Reach as our example weapon.

The Barbarian will equip this Polearm and attack enemies using Bash, which deals 150% weapon damage. In this case the average amount of damage done with Bash would be around 350.25 damage. (1.5 * ((213+254)/2)). Note: This calculation is completely ignoring the enemy's defense stats, monster level etc., but it is the basic calculation for % of weapon damage.

You can also increase you weapon damage or damage per second, by equipping armor and other types of gear that give bonuses to your particular Class' damage stat. See Attributes for more information on this.

Skills were changed during Beta testing to deal damage based on % of weapon damage. This was done to create balance throughout the entirety of the game. Balancing every Class equally through Normal, Nightmare, Hell and Inferno is very important. This % of weapon damage system will also help the Diablo 3 developers a great deal when balancing PvP in the end-game.

There are millions of different calculations that go into a game that has great depth such as Diablo 3. Comparing apples to apples (% of weapon damage to % of weapon damage) makes it easier to compare all facets of the Skill and Damage systems and eventually make sure that every aspect of the game is balanced. A well balanced game makes Diablo 3 enjoyable for everyone and patches can always be made to fix imbalances or other issues.