In Diablo 2 the DPS is primarily affected by:
1-Primary) % damage increase mod
2-Secondary) Integer +dam mod
3-Tertiary) Strength % damage bonus
There were interesting ways to work with this, phase blade +dam (Grief say). Also I loved ethereal and the socketing system, though some of the runewords was questionable in whether it added to the game. After the expansion and various patch the itemization system in D2 was close to perfect in my eyes.

I remember thinking about whether the D3 design team can come close to balance slow/fast and 1h/2h/DW weapons, and decided that given their extensive experience taken from D2 it should at least be in the ballpark, or within jogging distance to perfection. To me their start seems to fall abit short:

In Diablo 3 the DPS is primarily affected by:
1-Primary) Integer +dam mod
2-Secondary Primary) Prime stat % damage bonus
From what I've seen the huge +dam mods (particulary elemental) lategame hugely favors faster weapons, whereas the % based dam as primary increase would've scaled them equally, the Integer +dam mods seem to skew things toward fast weapons by far too much. The problem seems to be that +dam mod is the prime driver (with primary stats modifying this base figure), which is far rarer and take a backseat in D2 but still allowing interesting niche cases. You could say that slower heavier weapons favor resource management, big skills (that you can't spam) and skills that aren't affected by weapon speed (Are there any?), but it seems that besides pretty niche builds that I can't think of fast weapons are the clear way to go.

On the other hand, I like how they worked the DW out, adding a bonus 15% IAS and allowing any IAS% mod to affect both weapons. The "simplification" of IAS in this game is also a plus compared to D2, being one of the rare few simplification that I liked. 2H weapons I can't say yet, but the DPS increase compared to 1H is pretty small, though being slower in general may favor big skill niche builds, however per above it seems to be screwed by the the DPS driver system in D3.

Now I am aware it just came out with no expansion yet, but that is not an excuse considering that they have had the extensive experience of D2. They should at least be able to start with an itemization system quality within jogging distance behind the level that D2 attained. Comparing D3 start to D2 start seem rather dim, do people really set the bar for D3 to when D2 just came out with no regards to the 10+ years of experience and supposed progress? Anyway, the current incarnation of itemization in D3 seems disappointing and a quite a regression of the itemization system achieved in D2.

Please, none of that D2X vs D3C C=/X argument, it's akin to tipping waiter for bad service and encouraging EA-like antics.

I'd like to hope that this is was just a kickoff syndrome, and that the next few months will see some big effort to improve itemization in general. Though given what they did with the experience gotten from D2 and came up with in D3, my glass seem half empty rather then half full from before.