Warriors

Spears/piercing are pretty solid.
I'd debate they make you crit more often.

Whips are their own offensive weapon category and weapon skill (think whipping weapons). It's just no class has the weapon skill. They're not governed by slashing weapons at all, although they should be. IIRC, even if a whipping weapon SAYS it is doing slashing damage, it's really not a slashing weapon.

Anaiah posted a copy and paste of the hidden offensive table for each character, and you can see whips clearly in their own separate category.

Tangential Observation:

IIRC, the only reason for ever using a whipping weapon, was with a lightning elementalist on crack and buffed out with a sky high offense/defense, as it'd be extremely hard to parry their energy whips. Since parry gets a big boost from your weapon skill in the weapon being parried against. But there's also like 5 other better strategies for being a dangerous elkro so it's never seen...and wouldn't be nowadays with hybrid madness.

I've had insanely skilled up rangers, warriors and assassins. Weapon skill makes a huge difference. Even the 10-20 points that just comes from starting with it at novice. My rangers with swords could butcher assassins with only bludgeoning/piercing. A warrior that gets any advanced weapon into the high journeyman, will butcher the best maxed out ranger in the world owing to the parry drop-off.

Abuzer and Nadhir sparred almost every day, for something like thirty straight days of playing time. We both twinked on stilt lizards. Abuzer is the dwarf that killed like 4-5 delves by himself in under a minute. Nadhir (a ranger) could beat him up to the very end when it was a contest with the four main weapons. But 9 days playing time into training with pikes, Abuzer started to rip him up (like getting brutal wounds with a training weapon). Nadhir had previously only lost in sparring to Hawk using a training trident, looong ago. He could not lose if it was axes/clubs/swords/spears. There is a log up here of him killing a maxed out staff-statted delf warrior sent specifically to assassinate him while he was with six other people. (He told them to leave, stayed and fought the delf).

I've experienced the same thing every time I took an assassin into the Byn. It's also why merchants, burglars, mages, pickpockets, etc, under 15-20 days played time, are almost like instant kills to even newbie combat chars.

I'm not saying weapon skill is like a 1:1 transfer to parrying, but it feels like at least a 2:1 or 3:1.

lol