Help with choosing a weapon

Which stat should I judge a weapon by - neutral damage or average DPS?

 

If you are going for melee, prioritize weapons that can fit your build's attack speed (tierstack should be vslow or slower, rawstack should be fast+)
For spell, calculations get a bit complicated depending on your build but higher average dps weapons fare better with large spell% or ele% bonuses whilst lower average dps weapons get more milage out of raw spell (think the nothing, spell% does nearly nothing to increase its damage in contrast to cataclysm)

 

I am a heavy melee player. I usually go for average DPS, high attack speed and XP bonus would be nice. How correct is this?

 

heavy melee and fast attack speed does not match up
heavy melee means you use a weapon that has very slow or super slow attack speed
if you're using weapons with fast attack speed, you should refer your playstyle as just 'melee'

 

So then what do people mean when they say 'heavy' melee?

 

Heavy melee is Super Slow attack speed, often using the quake powder special

 

using super slow attack speed weapons makes powder specials easier to activate by lowering the amount of hits you need to charge it up(3 hits)
players usually match it up with earth powder special Quake, the one that deals high AoE earth damage
or they could be using Chain Lightning in some cases but it's likely to be Quake most of the time
orrr they're using a weapon that has no powder slots, which means they are relying on pure, slow melee attacks as their playstyle
so when players say they're using heavy melee they're either using powder specials or just heavy(slowwwww) melee attacks

 

So is my weapon choosing technique right?

 

yeah if you're playing melee just go for average dps & exp bonus i guess
use https://hppeng-wynn.github.io/builder/?v=1 to calculate

 

Neither

Assuming you're near or at endgame, choose a weapon based on what playstyle and/ or archetype you're using