Honestly I can't imagine how that could be effective. I mean, the heat of battle, you see a fast moving guy. "Oh, he's gonna attack me, I better switch to my sword". Agi guy runs past you. "Oh he's not, where is my steel pick...".
Carrying additional 1.7 kg just for an arguable advantage of reach in some very limited cases doesn't seem worthy to me.
You'd want to have some more use of a weapon you have to carry with you all the time (like horse rearing in case of spears).
No way man. Sometimes you just know that the guy approching from the distance is a super fast ninja dude. Or maybe he's fighitng one of your teamies, and you see him spamming and S-keying his ass off. You know -- he's a super fast light armored spam attack ninja machine, and you're going to have trouble hitting him.
That's when you do it.
You move your mouse wheel slightly to pull out your FLY SWATTERâ„¢. It just takes a split second, but you go from slow-moving shield turtle to a slow-moving shield turtle with really long arms. It helps a lot. Try it, you might like it.
In terms of which sword to use, I always say speed is king.