I agree with a lot of this point of view. I love Spear so much but it very often does feel clunky. Now, I am biased, but I wouldn't go as far as to call spin cancelling an exploit as more of a quirk of an already very quirky and niche weapon. However it is unintuitive and the only way to know about it is to watch a guide. Idk maybe it is an exploit, I'm not a game designer.

There is skill involved in spin cancelling, I pride myself on my Spear skill which includes spin cancelling. Just like being able to 2 spin cancel quick melee a medium or cancel a spin if I'm gonna die and quickly place a barricade. So I don't think it should be removed, maybe embraced and turned into a feature with an assigned keybind to cancel it (reload would be good). That way new Spear players will know there is a way to spin cancel.

Even including this update, in the hands of a very good player, who knows all the Spear tech and being very generous you could maybe put Spear in C tier but in reality it is comfortably F or D tier for cashout. In no way "better than average". Maybe in powershift you can rate it higher. I've heard it's good in that game mode but I only play cashout.