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The answers to the question Should we use slow or fast weapon on the wizard? say that many spells, like Blizzard, are not affected by attack speed. So, for better DPS, people should be better off using heavy 2 handed weapons.

Yet most Wizards use 1 handed weapons.

Why?

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    Keep in mind that a good offhand adds both a lot of damage and a lot of extra stats. This means 2-handed weapons won't necessarily hit harder.
    – Hex
    Apr 7, 2014 at 6:37
  • Dunno if anyone said it, but a 2H Weapon can have only 1 Socket, as well as 1H. So the additional Socket on your offhand is kinda important, especially if you Dual Wield.
    – BadSnowflake
    Apr 22, 2014 at 13:10

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Because if you use 1 hand weapon you can benefit from an offhand item that bring you a lot of stats as well as damage that you wouldnt be able to find on a weapon. You can find

  • Crit chance
  • Elemental damage
  • Vitality
  • Some good damage that compensate for not using a 2handed weapon
  • Arcane power
  • Bonus to a skill
  • etc

Since 2.0 patch, elemental damage and +x% skill damage has became the bread and butter of every classes. Imagine you "lose" 10% damage by not using a 2 handed weapon but you gain 15% to blizzard on your off-hand, in the end you benefit more from it since you gain more damage.

Currently I don't see why any class would use a 2 handed weapon (Except the Crusader for obvious reason)

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  • I agree that this logic applies to most classes. For example for monks, see this question. Better stats, and also faster attack speed means faster resource generation.
    – Wikwocket
    Apr 7, 2014 at 7:45
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    2 handers still plain suck, period. Even as a crusader I'd have to think twice about one since it ties up a passive and makes me slow as heck.
    – l I
    Apr 7, 2014 at 14:30
  • @z- Blizzard need to seriously buff the damage to make it worth haveing a 2H weapon. Even as a Demon Hunter where you can still have a quivher with 2H crossbow, nobody use them because damage are the same as 1H
    – WizLiz
    Apr 7, 2014 at 14:33
  • I think most DHs use Maticor as 2H, because of the heavy damage and you save your hate because of slower attacking but the same damage.
    – Warterminator
    Apr 8, 2014 at 9:47
  • I play only DH and I can assure you that since RoS, no one want to use 2H. The attack speed is way to slow to generate enough hartred and the damage has been nerfed on ther manticore which can roll max 35% Crit Damage as well as a socket. Compared to the Vanilla one which could roll 100% CD + 2 socket.(thats why dps was gigantic)
    – WizLiz
    Apr 8, 2014 at 10:38
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What WizLiz said is true.

However I would still probably choose a 2H weapon if I want to make say a Disintegrate or a Ray of Frost build, because the slow attack speed will make my arcane power tick slower and I can hold the ray for much much longer (about 30 secs with skills).

Also the damage is really nice and not to be ignored even without the extra stats from the offhand.

The Disnintegrate/Blizzard build (pre RoS), which was the next most popular one, next to the CM wizard, was played with a Skorn about 90% of the time.

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    while that's true disintegrate works just as well with a slow one hander and a source with arcane power on crit.
    – l I
    Apr 9, 2014 at 12:10
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    Indeed, slow one-handers are harder to come by though. I seem to like Odyn Son for a disintegrate build, or any channeled spell build for that matter.
    – Simeon
    Apr 9, 2014 at 12:58

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