The commander before Nuk was a staff/spear spec. Did pretty damn good. Mubs was a staff spear spec with trapping, rocked FACE with his tree trunk.
Axe, Mace, Sword, Polearm, and to some degree staffs and spears have heavy weapon opions. (hand is good for stun and because of high strength) Heavy equals harder to parry, and it plays into class strengths.
Dagger, whip, flail and to some degree spears and staffs have spec skills that are dexterity based. So having giant dex means your skills just will work like shit, like a felar AP's spells for the most part. People have done it with some degree of success, but the problem is, that these subpar builds will never compete with one that comes together really well mechanically.
I might note, that playing a cookie cutter build, as opposed to making something unique, interesting, challenging to play and different, will probably get you less immortal attention and head turning than playing one that is obviously a sub par build that sticks it out.