So from the patch to Update1:

"- Many attacks have been converted over to use weapon damage directly, either flat or percent based. This will increase over all damage and give better returns when upgrading weapons and increasing strength. Affected attacks are:
- Ashen Hand, Crescent Kick, Dragon's Rage, Sundering Dragon Claw, Fists of Transcendence, Legendary Fists, Flying Kick, Kick of the Heavens, Thousand Fists, Three Finger Strike, Thundering Fists, Deadly Adder Hand, Celestial Kick of the Master, Withering Palm, Stinging Backfist, Steal the Wind, Quivering Palm"

Weapon damage...

Now some backstory, I newbed my way along until about level 12 with switching various weapons around and trying to raise them all.  Then I started reading monk boards and the common wisdom was, fight barefisted, anything short of an amazing weapon you are better off.

Fine, so I sold all my weapons.

Now we have the Update1 and subsequent patch with the above language in it.  I haven't seen a post-patch discussion as to whether it is now of benefit to us to use weapons, if barefisting it is still superior.  I have little knowledge of parsing or how to produce an objective comparable result, last night as a 16 monk with level 23 handwrap/ulak I could plainly see that with just letting autoattack go, the weapons hit higher than barehand.  But with special attacks from the list above that I have at my level, the values are so all over the place I can't tell which was better.

So post patch, can anyone enlighten me as to whether I should once again seek out the best of a variety of weapons, before I spend the money?  (which at my level is still tight)

Thanks!  So much has changed so recently that a lot of the main discussions based on older mechanics may not be pertinent anymore...

Level 16 Raki Monk vs level 12-13 2-dot spiders (19 for each parse)

Using mainly Crescent Kick II, Flying Kick II, Ashen Hand II and Boundless Fist III in Drunken Mastery Stance.

Unarmed (barefisted)
(lvl 16 fists / ? ) Hand to Hand skill 129

(str 93 dex 97 Defense 1691 Attack 68-73 Ranged 76-77 Offhand 34-36)

Total Hits: 191
Total Damage: 25945
Hits 0-414
Time in Combat 371
Swingtime 1.942408
DPS 69.93262
Damage per hit 135.8377

Dual Weild (Bal. Handwraps/Bal. Ulak)
(lvl 23 Balanced Handwraps / 10.70 dps +4 str +5% crit chance) skill 63
(lvl 23 Balanced Ulak / 10.45 dps +56 hp +5% crit chance) skill 71

(str 97 dex 97 Defense 1691 Attack 82-84 Ranged 80-81 Offhand 41-44)

Total Hits: 171
Total Damage: 27694
Hits 0-500
Time in Combat 333
Swingtime 1.947368
DPS 83.16517
Damage per hit 161.9532

2-Handed (Bal. Crescent Staff)
(level 23 Balanced Crescent Staff / 14.10 dps +8 str +25 hp double damage on crit) martial staff 61, 2HBlunt 85

(str 101 dex 97 Defense 1691 Attack 124-144 Ranged 84-85)

Total Hits: 181
Total Damage: 28303
Hits 0-564
Time in Combat 400
Swingtime 2.209945
DPS 70.7575
Damage per hit 156.3702

Well....Not the most robust of parses but I'm an amateur.  I edited each combat log to the same number of spiders (19) and edited out "ranged" lines so pulling with shurikens wouldn't have any say in the data.  I can't really control for the differing strength bonus or the crit or double bonus...one does what one can.

If I'm reading this right, for me at 16 with weapons 7 levels above me (best I can weild, higher and they would be more than 20% equipment expertise) that Barefisted and 2H staff came out about the same , while dual weilding did best.  Note that the dual weild config did not have the highest strength bonus.

My weapon skills are all over the place but even with misses, still the same number of spiders killed....and if I understand the swingtime, damage per hit and dps, it factors out the moments between swings.  I could be wrong there.