If you didn't read past the first two words of the subject line, I'm not suggesting we buff 2hs. I'm talking about buffing longswords, heavy bastard swords, bastard swords, and possibly morningstars when used with shields.
Currently, my understanding is that using these weapons in 1h mode gives something like a 30-35% (correct me if I'm wrong) decrease to both speed and damage. This is a HUGE penalty. Consider the heavy bastard sword:
In 2h mode, it has 100 speed and 36 cut. In 1h mode, it has closer to 65 speed and 23 cut. This gives it the damage of a peasant knife, and the speed of a turtle with palsy. For comparison, this makes it the slowest weapon out there, losing to the pike with a 68 speed and long maul with 70 speed, and far slower than the slowest 1h weapon, the military hammer, at 94 speed. It's very easy to get spammed using these weapons with a shield.
Now, these weapons generally have longer ranges than 1h weapons, but not by much. I don't want to make these op by any stretch, I'm ok with them still being mildly inferior choices as 1h weapons, but I do believe that they should at least be viable choices. Longswords and bastard swords were historically designed such that they could be used as both 1h and 2h weapons. With the current stats, there is really no reason to ever use them as a 1h weapon and I think this should change.
I'm more concerned about the speed than the damage, and I think something closer to a 10% speed penalty would be more appropriate. That would put the HBS at 90 speed, still slower than every other 1h weapon.
I believe in the past that this issue couldn't be resolved because it was hardcoded? I'm hoping now that we have the magical and awesome WSE, something can finally be done about this.
Conflict of interest: I declare a personal conflict of interest in that I love using the heavy bastard sword and it saddens me that it's laughably ineffective as a 1h weapon.