Unless you have 99 strength, the tiny increase in speed(which is not consistant) is definately not worth sacrificing strength training. I recently bought a spear for the new beast and tested the two a lot more thoroughly, sometimes you get more kills/5 minutes with the sword, sometimes with the spear, with the spear averaging ahead by 1.2 or something similar if I remember right. i myself am working on 90 melee's..i have 91 str, and needed 2 more lvls in att n def for 90's...i tried z spear, there same speed, it think..but the accuracy of z spear beats the slightly higher str of ss, hitting 1 higher max damage every so often or hitting to more 20, instead of a 0....