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?