Pike is a support weapon. Long spear can handle itself on 1v1 if the player is skilled and lucky.
And even so is a bit risky, you need to be experienced enough to be a fast reader of the specific enemy actions.
The only few people around that I can think of (seen doing it), able of winning in 1 on 1 are Zotte (crafty), Shpongled (Sh-pon-guld), and myself (cofcof).
It's very rewarding to kill in 1 on 1 specially when dealing with shielders.
I don't think the current situation of the Long Spear is so "overpowered" as related. As any weapon on this game, if used by multiple targets at the same time, it's super effective.
It's not that hard to block up or down for long spear, or hold down for pike.
The only major problem of the pikes, is the hardcoded stupid tip hitboxes, which might be able to fix with cmp's project.
Nerfing speed, or damage/animations wont deal with this, and this will still be exploited and overused.
Cheers.