I've never liked Bat'leths. They're bad. They make zero sense as a weapon.
Wielded in both hands, it have all the reach of a large knife, but none of the maneuverability.
You can kind of use a Bat'leth one-handed, but it's clumsy and not at all balanced. It makes for wild swings that are more likely to hurt you or your friends than the enemy.
You can sort of block with them, if the opponent is going to make an overhead chop. That looks cool on screen, but if the warrior with a Bat'leth was facing a warrior with a simple sword and shield, the warrior with the Bat'leth would fucking die.
It's just a bad weapon, and looks like it was made to impress mall ninjas.
The guy who designed it for Worf in TNG, was inspired by a Chinese single-handed weapon. That weapon was not widely used because it wasn't actually that good.
Still, the deer horn knives are theoretically a sound choice for a weapon, provided your goal is to disable the opponents while likely getting skewered from range.
The Bat'leth is just a useless hunk of metal.
It was designed to be showy and look interesting on camera, not as a practical weapon, and it really does fail as a practical weapon.
Agreed to a point. Klingons are a proud people. Any petaQ can pull a disruptor or transport you into space (O'Brien looking around suspiciously), but a true warrior will triumph even with a ridiculous handicap. "A fucking pencil!"
Have you ever held a Bat'leth? Because it makes you feel powerful. Klingons are interested in feeling powerful and striking fear in their enemies, and for that the Bat'leth is pretty freaking great.
I mean, we're human, so I get the whole Indiana Jones "Ima just shoot the guy" thing. But we're talking about Klingons. Even if the weapon is objectively bad, there is honor in killing an enemy the hard way.