On this note, is the bleed effect worth specing Axes instead of Sword?
It's certainly a different playstyle, and better for 1h weapons IMO.
The crit on swords lets you do stylish finishers a lot and feels like you have a bunch of finesse in killing, the maces is kinda the same way but more about blugeoning and staggering. If you dual wield and like feeling like a barbarian, axes are the way to go. The bleed is good damage that seems to ignore armor completely, and is GREAT for going postal in large groups. The cleave bleed is good if you are striking lots of people but not really focus firing any of them and when an enemy goes into recovery state (kneels to take a breath) the bleed almost always kills them unless they are a particularily strong enemy.
This way when someone does down you can move onto the next quickly, it's great to see someone mortally cleaved die from their wounds too.
My 1h/shield warrior invested in an offhand weapon and perks toward the end of the game when I was doing the civil war and it was great, I was using axes and had 3/3 axe spec at that point. Running into large groups slashing with my axes to apply bleeds then using dual wield power attacks was a rush to be sure. Be sure to use one handed strikes with axes though, those are the ones that let you keep moving, once you get into the thick of it with enemies all around you, that's when you go for the dual wield power attacks. I'm not positive, but it seemed to do more bleed damage if I hit with left and right axes instead of just one of them.... like each one stacked a separate bleed, which made dual wielding all the more useful.