Sampire: DPS, max damage or specials?

[pgcd]

As I'm almost done with my fencing training, I find myself in the interesting situation of having to figure out what weapons to use when fencing...
For swords and maces, the choices are pretty clear - Diamond Mace; Rune Blade and Ornate Axe for DPS, Black Staff and Radiant Scims for specials etc.
For fencing, though, I can't make up my mind. Leafblade seems to be an obvious choice for the excellent specials (and for Connor's endorsement =)), but it's a one-hander and it doesn't have a very high dps (33 for me, according to Stratics), so I'd like something else to complement it, and here's the problem.
Kama's Whirlwind would be great but Defense Mastery kinda sucks, and the Kama's DPS make it absolutely worthless for leeching purposes, I'm afraid - am I correct in this?
Pitchfork's DPS is pretty good even when low on stamina (1.25 swing with a 30SSI and 100 stam), but the specials are kinda pointless in PvE, and the max damage isn't that great...

Well, anyway - what would you go for? Keep in mind that I'm gonna imbue, so it's not really a matter of "whatever I find", seeing as I can waste a few hammer to craft a 30SSI weap to start my imbuing.

 

[Connor_Graham]

The leafblade really has one of the best DPS of the fencing weapons. While something like a spear or war fork can be useful because of the specials, you can get away with having a variety of leafblades as the only fencing weps very easily. Others such as warfork, with specials that are used for a specific task such as disarming your opponent, are useful, but far from necessary.

 

[northwoodschopper]

if you have a lot of stamina and the swingspeed, don't discount pikes and the lajatang, which can do some serious damage at max swingspeed. a lajatang can be a total terror at champ spawns w/ fenzied whirlwind, sadly it has defense mastery though too.
if you use a pike with parasitic poison, you are damn near unkillable as long as the poison sticks.