Yep, spears are garbage, Terrible hitbox, crappy range and inefficient stamina usage due to lack of 3 hit combo.
The only saving grace of spears is the secondary attack which can be useful for counterattacking after parrying a ranged attack however this move is still far weaker than the secondary attack of swords and maces, (spear secondary has 1,5x multiplier, mace has 2,5x and sword has 3x) therefore those are better for actual melee.
The only spears that are worth making are the flint and fang spear cuz they are cheap.