You can change stats in any ascended weapon and you will get ascended spear skin it will count as crafted item after this so you can get research pages from it.
This means that you can transform weapon from loot and make it count as crafted one.
Y ppl rush to get gen1 leg spear whn new expension will release a new leg spear skin is beyond me.....
Idk ... maybe because they wanna experiment with the new spear skills right away? But I don't really think that's the reason for everyone
You can get the dungeon spears as well from the rewardtracks in WvW and PvP (only a third of the reward track needed)