I think the special refers to the amount of damage not the damage type. I would be very suprised if the dev's intention was to make AS do untyped damage.
Note that most scrappers and most stalkers do smash/lethal damage. The only stalker that doesn't is with energy melee, which I'd guess ( on paper ) is probably the best primary at high levels.
I believe the balance is
Blade, def debuff and self buff, increased ACC.
MA, knockback, disorient ?, increased ACC.
Energy, energy damage as well as smashing.
Spines, recharge and speed debuff, one ranged attack, minor DoT toxic component.
@Unthing ... Mostly on Union.
and claws?.... 
Defiant
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I'm sure I read on the beta boards that it was untyped by design so it could get through bubbles/defenses/resists. Otherwise it would be pretty useless against tanks/scrappers and a lot of the mobs in the game. I just discovered that with AS slotted with 2 acc and 4 dmg DOs I can't one-shot an even-con spectral follower!!
As for the disorients in MA they are laughably few and far between (apart from Cobra Strike) compared to MA scrappers in CoH. I'd guess a 1 in 40-50 rate with Thunder Kick.
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and claws?....
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I was pretty unsure of the MA stuff and know nothing about claws.
@Unthing ... Mostly on Union.
Energy Melee carries Disorient too.
World of Jackcraft.
Only bothered to check my combat logs on this today since I'm fighting CoT Spectral Followers and AS didn't seem to be as effective.
To a -1 normal minion it's doing 40.42 points of smashing plus an extra 242.59 points of smashing - I thought the extra was supposed to be "Special" damage?
To a -1 spectral minion it does 24.25 and an extra 145.55!!
With the amount of mobs, not to mention heroes and villains that have smashing resistance this has got to be a bug hasn't it? At least it explains why I was doing so little damage to the exemped heroes in bloody bay yesterday.