That comes mostly down to your playstyle and not a inherent imbalance between the weapons. For me the longer weapons, like Greatswords and Great Bardiche work much better nowadays than my old trusty HBS. 1H again depends a lot on your playstyle and the opponents armor levels. For EU1/2 there are lots of good options from slow cleavers to fast liuyedao and longer ones like ACS/NCS. For heavier armors you have the steel pick, warhammer, spathovaklion and so on. Against shielders you want an axe. I think the weapons are really well balanced right now in cRPG and I doubt anyone quit because a certain weapon they want to use is not strong enough...
I'm not entirely sure what's the best as 2h after the level change but I'm sure it'll still be more or less the same, the great bardiche is too slow to be a good choice and it doesn't really bring more damage than the miaodao.
You don't need to counter shields with weapons because blocking in the first place shouldn't be the reason you died. Why do you need to break the shield? Why not simply outplay them, if they turtle behind their shield for a minute they're not even playing the game but rather being useless and they're making you useless. Shield is only bought for focusing on combat deeper by ignoring manual blocking, blocking arrows + panic blocks in emergency. That's why shields are better with better players, but still amazing for the newer ones. Either way, shield has never been a problem.
The steel pick, warhammer and spathovaklion doesn't provide more damage towards armor than a high damage cut weapon does, it's more inefficient and it's too short to use when you have massive kick range and majority of players using polearm/2h. The NCS is alright but there's no point using that rather than nordic war sword if you want speed, or ACS if you want reach.
While I agree that it comes down to my opinion it's also all the factors of gameplay taken in mind, as you already have "found flaws" in my ideas of the best weapons we can criticize it forever but I still don't see why you'd choose any other weapon than those I listed.
Speed only does so much, someone who can block will probably block no matter the speeds
Speed is underrated, it catches people off guard when they're slightly hesitant or you abuse your armor and positioning to make the opponent glance. With a fast weapon such as heavy bastard sword it forces the opponent to always play fully focusing or they'll die quickly.
EDIT: I just launched cRPG for a few rounds, two people are on EU1. Guys? Mod is flourishing right g-guys?