How much usage did you get from axe? Did you just take it for disembowel? and if you could pick again would you rather whip or mace.

In practice, it was mostly for disembowel and weaponbreak. I didn't pick axe because I exactly thought it would be the strongest thing, but to try something different for me -- I've done mace/whip/dagger/etc. a lot and low-STR axe pretty infrequently.

Whirl I didn't get a lot of mileage out of, just because it was basically all I had for maledictions and usually I either didn't care if I dropped your STR/DEX, or I couldn't dent your overmax stats with just whirl.

In theory I had planned to pincer and hook a lot more than I did but it just didn't pan out that well in practice. Hook was really effective but it turned out that the kind of people I could beat that way I could beat just about as easily with riposte instead. Pincer did get used a bit, but often I was picking fights (e.g. going at two pretty tough people, or 2-3 people at a cabal inner) where I didn't dare pass on swords for flourintine and riposte. One of the cases where I really expected to needed to switch to pincer mode -- fighting people I couldn't just straight outmelee in the Rites -- was a complete bust because my STR wasn't high enough to dual wield Grime axes.

Am I the only one who likes weaponbreak, whirl and pincer?

What's wrong with those skills?