How to Build a Barbarian in Diablo III. Updated: September 5, 2019. Explore this Article Knowing the Right Skills Learning About Stats Obtaining the Necessary Equipment Ask a Question Related Articles. Get +Critical Damage and +Attack Speed on your gloves and bracers. I know in Diablo III you can no longer assign your attributes, and I know there are four attributes present in the game: Strength Vitality Dexterity Intelligence What are the stat bonuses from each. What are the properties of each stat point? Ask Question Asked 7 years, 4 months ago. Active 7 years, 4 months ago. Diablo III – Crusader Appearance. As with all Diablo III classes there is a strong theme to the armour that you will find for the class and an overall progression in the appearance. For the Crusader that appearance does from a simple starting knight with bits of armour and some cloth through to a fully plated heavy knight. Diablo 3 Tracker is the answer to all these questions. Diablo 3 has been evolving through many patches. Many attributes are being affected by many factors. The DPS (Damage per second) is a perfect example. The calculation consists of many equations and rules, which have been updated dramatically in patches 1.03, 1.05 and 1.07. That’s why we’re bringing you the best Diablo 3 builds for each class. So stay awhile and listen. Diablo himself won’t be able to stop you with these builds. Understanding The Diablo 3 Meta. Before we get into the best character builds, it’s important to note that Diablo 3 is a live game. Diablo 3 Monk Stats & Gear Guide. Monk Stats and Attributes. Diablo 3 includes several character stat attributes, including 4 core stats. Each class has one primary core attribute. The Dexterity attribute increases the damage output of the Monk and increases the ability of the Monk to dodge incoming attacks. Apr 28, 2014  Stupid Question - Weapon Damage. So i got a stupid question: What exactly is 'Weapon Damage'. Primary attribute's contribution (Dex/Int/Str), Attack Speed, Critical hit Chance, Critical hit Damage. This is the subreddit community for Diablo 3 and its expansion, developed by Blizzard. Come and join the discussion!

The Base Stats

Strength
-Grants 1 point of armor per point
-Increases damage for barbarians by 1% per point ex: 1337 strength would result in 1337% extra damage; if said barbarian normally hit 100, they would then hit 1437.
Dexterity
-Grants some dodge per point, starting at .1%; grants less at higher levels of dexterity.
-Increases damage for monks and demon hunters by 1% per point.
Intelligence
-Grants .1 point of resistance per point.
-Increases damage for Wizards and Witch Doctors by 1% per point.
Vitality
-Grants 10 points of health per point; increased if character has % health affixes.
-For ever level past 35, vitality grants an extra point of health. ex: at level 36, it will give 11 hp/point, and at lvl 37 it will give 12 hp/point.

Items

DPS
Determined by taking the average of the maximum hit and the minimum hit ((min+max)/2) and multiplying it by the attacks per second.
Damage
Damage on weapons is randomly selected for maximum and minimum values from a pool.
For example, look at this axe:

Diablo 1 Attributes

The axe's minimum damage will range from 2 to 3, and the maximum will range from 3 to 4. At this time I am 99% positive that the minimum damage will NEVER equal the maximum damage, ex: the axe will not roll a 3 for minimum, and a 3 for maximum. If the minimum rolled a 3, them max would have to be 4 (the only remaining number from the range 3-4 including all whole numbers).
Attack Speed
Attack speed in Diablo 3 is displayed in attacks per second. This is constant value for all item types other than select legendaries. It is affected by attack speed affixes. If you desire to know the attack speed in the amount of seconds it take per hit, take the inverse of the attacks per second (1 divide by the attacks per second).
Affixes
Note: like damage and armor, all affixes are randomly selected from a pool for each item (except legendaries) the values for each affix are then also randomly selected from a range of possible values (INCLUDING legendaries).
Additional Damage
Minimum damage: Added to the base minimum rolled by the weapon.
Maximum damage: Added to the base maximum rolled by the weapon.
Damage %: Multiplied by the maximum and minimum damage on the weapon.

For example if you find a weapon that say +31% Damage, such as this:

The 840.2 DPS damage indicated is the damage output after the calculated +31%.
Elemental damage:
Each of the possible elemental damage affixes, if they happen to be rolled onto a weapon, are also rolled from a range of minimum and maximum damage.
Note: The elemental damage is already added to the maximum and minimum damage vales of the weapon when found.
The various types of elemental damage all provide special bonuses when the weapon they are applied to scores a critical hit. Note: this does not affect spells for the witch doctor and wizard, as their damage is already of a specific damage type. An example of a possible exception is spectral blade, which normally deals physical damage.
Arcane: critical hits cause a silence effect, preventing spell casts.
Fire: critical hits cause a fire damage over time effect to be applied to the target.
Cold: critical hits cause the target to be frozen for a short time.
Lightning: critical hits cause the target to be stunned for 2 seconds (?).
Holy: Unknown (extra damage to undead regardless of critical?).
Poison: Unknown (I believe it simply applies a damage over time effect).
Attack Speed
Increases the speed at which attacks are delivered.
Attack speed %: Simply increases the attack speed of the weapon and any skills, resulting speed is the product of original attacks per second * (1 + AttackSpeed%)
On Hit Affects
Life: per offensive damaging attack, gain # in health
Life steal: gain % of damage you deal as health. (put this here to keep it near life on hit)
Life on kill: gain # health per enemy death '
Knockback: % chance to knock target away on attack
Fear: % chance to cause enemy to run away in fear on attack
Stun: % chance to stun enemy on attack
Blind: % chance to blind enemy on attack
Freeze: % chance to freeze enemy on attack
Chill: % chance to chill enemy on attack (note: chills slow attack speed also, slows do not(?))
Slow: % chance to slow enemy on attack
Immobilize: % chance to immobilize on attack
Critical Attacks
Critical attacks are attacks that do 150% of normal weapon damage, or 50% extra. The base critical hit chance is 5%.
Critical hit chance: increases your critical chance by the displayed %.

Critical hit damage: increase your critical hit damage by the %; NOTE: This damage is added to your critical hit damage; ex: if you found an amulet that gave 50% critical hit damage, it wouldn't cause your critical hits to do 175% damage; they would now deal double damage, 200%.

Defensive Stats

Armor
Armor reduces damage taken from all sources, including elemental. Armor is also selected randomly from a range.

Resistances
+ to all resistances adds an equal amount to each of these:
Physical resistance: Reduces physical damage taken.
Arcane resistance: Reduces arcane damage taken (shares a spot with holy resistance on the stat page).
Fire resistance: Reduces fire damage taken.
Cold resistance: Reduces cold damage taken.
Holy resistance: Reduces holy damage taken (shares a spot with arcane resistance on the stat page).
Poison resistance: Reduces poison damage taken.
Dodge
Dodge is a chance to completely avoid damage, increased by dexterity (there is no +dodge affix).
Misc. Stats
Gold find increases the amount of gold found by a set %; if you find gold piles averaging 100 gold, if you gain 25% gold find, they will instead average 125 gold.
Magic find increases the amount of magical items found by a set %; this includes magical (blue) items, rare (yellow) items, and legendary (gold) items.
Gold drop and health orb radius increases the distance from which you can pick up health globes or gold coins.
Class Affixes
There are multiple affixes for skills for each class.
-Reduced skill costs (fury, hatred, arcane power, spirit, mana).
-Increased critical hit chance (3-5%).
-Increased damage.

More Info:

+% crit chance and +%crit damage are universal stats which affect all attacks, so any increase to those statistics raises the crit chance and damage multiplier of all attacks, including spells.
For instance, on the Demon Hunter, if you have the Archery passive and wield a 2H Crossbow, you get +50% crit damage, and your bombs and traps blow up for huge crits, even though the crossbow doesn't have anything to do with them, really. Same goes for Wizards and their spells.
All casting is influenced by +Attack Speed%. Try it yourself, equip a fast 1H weapon and then a slow 2H weapon and try casting some signature spells and other spells like Arcane Orb. The time between shots of both is much longer with the big slow 2H weapon (but they hit harder).
This is somewhat of a design problem, as I see it, because with a fast weapon you can shoot out a bunch of orbs real fast and blow through all your arcane power, but each one won't hit as hard as ones from a slow weapon (a slow weapon of equivalent DPS has a much higher damage range per hit). But your arcane power doesn't regenerate any faster when you wield a fast weapon, so your use of arcane power is less efficient with a fast weapon.
I'm not sure how weapon speed affects channeled spells like disintegrate. Are the ticks further apart but hit harder with a slow weapon? Is arcane power used up faster with a fast weapon? I haven't tested this yet.
As for on-hit effects I know there's a lot of funniness with that, there are lots of threads specifically about +life on hit and spells, and which ones get it and which don't, if and how often or how many times you get it for AOE spells, what % of the effect you get per mob or for different spells or per tick of DOTs or spells with AOE durations, etc.

One last thing, I've gotten tons of help from the Diablo 3 Gold Secrets By Peng Joon guide, it is a premium guide, so there is a small fee for it, but well worth it.

What does weapon items do for Wizards in Diablo 3? Does weapon item DPS matter? Do item qualities such as steal/+damage etc. transfer to actual spell damage? Can I use a regular attack? and more will be answered in this article!

Diablo 3 Attributes Explained

Unlike in D2, a wizard should care deeply about his weapon in Diablo 3. It isn't just a “stat stick” with bonuses on it anymore. No longer are casters fairly equipment independent. All offensive skills have their damage based on the weapon item you have equipped. For example Magic Missile does 110% of your weapon damage, as arcane damage.
Weapon damage is used for spell damage. And weapon attack speed factors into your casting speed. Faster weapons will cast faster spells too.

How does Damage WORK?

Base Damage
Lets take a look at Magic Missile, and a wand (weapon or axe) with a 8-12 damage range, once per second, this results in an average 10 DPS. This is what your weapon reports as DPS, the other stats are there, but in the small print.

Diablo 2 Attributes

The weapon damage is the actual damage the weapon has, not DPS. This is why 2 hand weapons are often favored. They do more damage, but slower. So they may do 15 damage, but only 0.65 times per second. That’s still 10 DPS. But the spell amplifies the damage more, as it starts with more.
+damage items, such as rings, increase this base damage. This is a key factor to increasing your total damage output, as it gets magnified by all other damage multipliers (spells, int, skills).
Intelligence Bonus
The intelligence percentage works like this. Each point of intelligence boosts damage by 1%. So 110 int, increases damage by 110%. That is a 2.1 multiplier (shifting it from % to decimals, and treating it as a 100% increase).
Spell Bonus
Magic Missile then comes into effect, and deals damage specified it by its spell effect, listed as 110% under the skill. So it takes the damage listed in your inventory screen, and does 110%. If you did 100 damage, MM will hit for 110 damage.
Putting it all together
To determine the spell damage you take your:
(Weapon Damage with +damage from items) * Intelligence % * Spell Effect
So, if we start with a wand that averages 10 damage we get:
Weapon Damage (10) * Intelligence (2.10) * Spell Effect (1.10) for: 23.1 damage.
Now, if you increase the weapon damage, the effect grows. Not only does the weapon provide a bigger base damage to start with, but the % increase from intelligence and the spell have a bigger impact. 10% of 15, is larger than 10% of 10 for example.
So if we use a weapon that does 15 damage (the extra 5 damage from the weapon, or +damage items) we get: 15*2.1*1.1 = ~34.6 Damage.
That 5 additional damage gave us a head start, but the int and spell effect also gave us ~19.6 damage from intelligence and spell effect, while the 10 damage weapon only gained us 13.1 from our base.
This means, especially at low levels, that an increase in weapon damage, either from the weapon, or +damage rings etc, can have a huge effect on your damage output. That +damage is added to your base weapon damage, so it’s also amplified by your intelligence and your spell effects. If you have to choose between +damage or +int, go for the damage.
At higher levels, when adding 5 or 6 damage to your base isn’t that big an increase the need to prefer damage over intelligence boosts evens out a lot more.
So where do I see spell DPS?
The short version of this is that the damage reported on your inventory screen is the damage the skills boost when you cast them. If you get that number up, through whatever combination of items, your spell damage will go up. It factors in all items and modifiers before the spell automatically.
The damage increase listed in the stat summary of the items, when you compare them, is accurate, as best as I can determine. If it says your damage will increase 10 points by swapping the items, it appears accurate when I test by monitoring Hydra damage.
There is only one catch. For the time being, when comparing a 2H weapon to a 1H weapon, the game only reports the damage increase from swapping the weapons only. It does not factor in the loss of any bonuses from your offhand item. After you swap out a 1H item for a 2H, check the inventory screen for the final result, listed on the left side of the inventory window. When comparing a 1h to a 1h or a 2h to a 2h, the item reports the correct change in stats.
Elemental or Bonus Damage on a weapon:
So you have a 10dps sword, with +2 cold damage…why don’t you strike for 12 damage?
--The damage listed on the weapon is already integrated into the weapons base damage. The DPS takes it into account. You can confirm this by socketing a Ruby into your weapon. The base damage jumps, AND it lists the rubies bonus…so it does the math for you, but lets you know in case you have any +Cold damage % skills, which will only effect the +2 cold damage (not the entire weapon damage).
--The spells you cast usually replace the elemental damage type with their own. +2 cold damage from a physical blow will chill or freeze an enemy. From Magic missile, it’s converted to arcane, and will not chill your target. The damage is still there, in the base damage. It just isn’t cold damage anymore. Some spells retain the damage type. Spectral blades IIRC will deal cold damage if using a cold weapon.
2H vs 1H weapons
Now, does this mean that bigger base damage (i.e. 2H weapons) are always better than 1H? First, that’s gear dependent. If you get a nice off hand item you may end up doing more damage if you factor in it’s bonuses. Second you give up any other perks the off hand item provides. So no blocking from shields, less magical abilities (only one items worth in the 2H, vs the two items worth in the 1h & offhand). That can factor into decisions.
Weapon Speed
Wizards still care about this, as many spells casting time is linked to the weapon speed. If you have a faster weapon you can cast more spells per second. This is really good if you rely on signature (free) spells, or have abilities that you want to trigger. This, btw, is often refered to as a 'proc' for programmed random occurance. For example the lightning rune on magic weapon can trigger extra lightning strikes. Faster casts mean more chances for it to proc. (Thanks Leetnoob)
However if you like big burst damage spells (arcane orb) you may just want more damage. The limiting factor for them is not how fast you can cast them, but that you can only cast 3 or so before you are out of AP. Some spells, like Hydra, are extreme examples. You only get 1 hydra….doesn’t matter how fast you cast it, so more damage outweighs faster weapons, so 2H weapons win there. (Thanks Morphos)
For channeled spells (rays and torrent) the 2H weapons can still out perform faster 1H weapons, and this comes down, again, to mana cost. The two weapon types will have similar DPS, but the 1H weapons trigger more often (as seen by a 'pulse' in the beams), draining AP more often. So you spend more AP per damage point, for the same DPS. Unless you have some abilities you want to proc, this may be to inefficient for some builds & gear sets. (Thanks Dedna & JumpSec)
This doesn't mean 1H weapons (with a good offhand) are automatically worse. It is possible to make up for the AP 'inefficiency' of 1H weapons. Faster casting essentially costs more AP per second, meaning a fast caster will be out of AP and have to wait for the recharge. The advantage of the 1H is that they won't just wait during this phase. A skilled player will spam the 'free' signature spells during this time. This may be enough to close the damage gap between the weak AP spells of faster casts, compared to the strong AP spells of slow casts.
It can also be argued that it allows more flexibility and control. A fast caster will throw out 3 weaker Arcane Orbs (AO) really fast to smash the front ranks of a crowd, then fire off some chain lightning to catch stragglers, or try to get the back ranks (where summoners like to hide). If you throw in some other abilities triggered on each hit (paralysis, AP on crit) you may make up for the AP inefficiency in other ways (signature spells runed for AP gain)
Whether or not it's worth the extra work is up to the user, the available gear and their playstyle.
Damage Boosting Skills (MAGIC WEAPON)
Magic Weapon boosts your weapon damage, which increases spell damage. This bonus is applied alongside the intelligence and spell effect boosts. So a 10% boost from magic weapon on a 100 damage item, makes it a 110 damage item. If you have a 200% intelligence boost, and spell effect (to make the math easy) that gives you 440 damage output. Without the magic weapon, you would get 400 damage.
Note: Magic weapon may be bugged, and providing a 20% damage boost instead of the 10% reported on the skill.
These skills all stack, so if you get 10% from MW, 20% from the slow time rune, those both multiply your base damage. So the 100 damage item is run through:
100 damage * 2 (200% intelligence) * 2(spell effect %) * 1.1 (10% MW) *1.2 (slow time rune) = 528 damage
Some skills, like Familiar, do not boost the damage, as they fire their own bolt of energy at your target. The end effect is the enemy takes more damage (at the 20% familiar reports) it’s just not from your arcane orb, or other spells. That is unless you select a specific rune.

Quick FAQ to sum all this up:
1) Do Weapons MATTER for a wizard?
Yes. All damage dealing skills are based off of weapon damage.
Want to know how much your weapon damage is boosted by spell?
--Hold 'ctrl' while hovering over the skill.
--Or select 'advanced tooltips' from the 'gameplay' option menu.
But wizards shouldn’t use axes!
If you say that doesn't make sense...I say it's MAGIC!
If you think it makes wands/staffs obsolete…they get comparable DPS to other weapons (compare wands to 1h ranged, and staffs to 2h weapons), and get wizard desired bonuses (+AP on crit, etc).
2) Want more spell damage?
In general order of effectiveness:
--Equip a weapon that has a higher base damage.
--Equip items with +damage bonus (this is added to base weapon damage).
--Equip items with +intelligence bonus (this multiplies base weapon damage).
--Use skills that boost weapon DPS. (Magic Weapon). Boosting weapon damage, boosts spell damage.
--Higher attack speeds affect cast rate…this one is a bit more complicated, but all other things being equal, higher attack rates win.
3) Do Weapon effects transfer to spells?
Yes. Life steal, experience gain, damage, it all transfers to your spells.
4) Where is the regular attack? I want to shoot my bow!
Your signature spells (your 'primary' skills) are free to cast, and will do more damage than your base attack, plus other nifty status effects. There is no real reason I can imagine to want your basic attack. Other classes don't use their basic attacks either, and even in D2 it usually fell to the wayside.
If you want it: Merely drag your selected skill off of the primary or secondary skill slot. The default is a normal weapon attack.
If it's because you want a close range spell, like spectral blades, and a long range, like magic missle at the same time, but can't set it up...you can!
5) Want two defense spells? Two signature spells?
Turn on 'Elective Mode' in the gameplay options menu and you can now map any skill to any hotbar slot. So you can have both slow time and diamond skin, or spectral blades and magic missile.

For more in-depth guides for Wizards I would check out the Diablo 3 Gold Secrets By Peng Joon guide.