[Dedas]

Well, believe it or not, against certain enemies with low defense and morale (though both can be lowered with cheap magics like "panic" and "desiccation") a spear is a very good weapon for repelling; and an axe might even be overkill. Also, does not the huskarl have 2 javelins? Javelins are good my friend, especially if you are going to tie up some axe (lower range than spear) wielding no shield guys. Just set them to fire and they will soften the enemy up before they charge them with their spears. Slingers are also good for this, making the enemy vulnerable to low damage weapons. All this reduces the need to have heavy weapon troops with low attack, defense, shield etc, thus raising the survivability of your troops.
But of course, sometimes spears and javelins suck big time, for instance against EA Ermors tower shield troops. Because against those guys you really want as big weapons (and many at the same time) as you can get. Or maybe Morningstars (+2 to hit against shields) or pikes (no shield parry); the problem is getting trough their armor with low damage weapons such as these though, but with increased strength it is a piece of cake.

My main point is: You can't really take factor A and measure it against factor B and say that it should be raised or lowered because there is also a factor C, D and E to take into account. Heck, there is so many combinations in this game that I sometimes get dissy.

However, if a spell or a unit really is inferior in 99% of the possible scenarios imaginable I would really want a "fix" for it. A recent example of this would be glamour which does not really have any good counter (poison?).