Yeah, weapon specialization skills - at least when I last checked in the alpha - were pretty terrible and only added like 2 points to maximum and minimum damage, less than you get from finding the next tier of stuff. If they had other benefits like decreasing durability loss and increasing accuracy, then weapon specialization skills would be better.
(I haven't checked in the beta to see if they're better, I was going to wait until Madora got a few levels and a big weapon to see what the difference is.)
