Is there anything about the way monk skills are calculated that would influence how I gear myself?

They get abnormally large bonuses from armor and their kick damage depends on their boots' armor.

So the base attacks aren't driven by anything in particular? Like weapon ratio or agi/dex?

No, I don't recall anything like that being in there. Rogues have a few agi-driven things. Pretty standard melee stuff for damage aside from the kicking.

so what modifies the punches besides level?

Strength, mostly.

Hand-to-hand skill... not much aside from that. Monk punching is basically like a free "decent" weapon, but you can probably find weapons that perform better.

yeah, but weapons do modify the attacks that aren't kicks then? If so, is it ratio like with rangers or is it damage?

All skills sitting on a global cooldown use ratio.

Thank you!

I think I pretty much had to do it this way or everyone would just use 2h all the time.