Spears
Man, ain't no-one gonna endure getting the pointy end of a stick jabbed at them without some decent reflexes!
Spears skill determines your effectiveness while using polearms. Spears are generally much heavier than standard weapons, and are usually quite slow, but have high damage output to offput it. Spears most commonly do stabbing damage, though some do Slash as well.
Advantages
High-end spears such as the Chainsaw lance, Garden Weasel or Zap Brannigan tend to be very damaging and scale very well with brawn and endurance. They also can accept a wide range of mods compared to other weapons. Every spear is also at least PC1, and still more are PC2, allowing you to parry fists and whips with ease. The high endurance also helps greatly with drugs, so most spearmen are expected to get high as a kite on coke and speed. Spears also have a +5 bonus to parrying on all two-handed spears, and a 2.5 bonus on all one-handed spears.
Disadvantages
Spears are very heavy, compared to other weapons. They're also generally very slow and take a lot of reflexes to reach usual speed, and are still beaten out easily by Whips and Fists. Unless you take Chromemouth and minmax your to-hit, then you'll be at a much lower to-hit compared to other weapons by endgame.
Weapons
Sharpened Chopstick - Able to be improvised. Very weak, only really used for grinding.
Sharp Pole - Another grind weapon, slightly better than the military fork for damage. Can be bought in Ammu-Nation
Wooden Stake - Good for grinding up the last raws, and good for slaughtering vampires.
Military Fork - Can grind up to 3 raw, lower minimum damage than the Sharp Pole. Can be bought in Ammu-Nation
Infected Syringe - Effectively a one-shot weapon, infects anyone who it hits without Hyperimmune with Ebola and causes large amounts of bleeding. Sometimes used by serial killers and drops off of Doctor Shunt.
Signpost Spear - Sometimes drops off of crackheads, slightly better damage than Military Fork and Sharp Pole. Rarely sold by Ammu-Nation.
Spike Spear - Very slow. Occasionally drops off of racists and J'Mak, not typically sold by Ammu-Nation.
Assegai - Very good scaling and damage, able to be found in stormfront and necropolis.
Luftspeer - Premodded with balanced grip, monowire and sharpening kit. Has some extra electric damage.
Large Scythe - Dropped by Nuns, but quite slow. Excellent damage. Brawn spear.
Rusty Scythe - Easily acquired from the farmhouse west of Freedom City, past the chemical plant, and does good damage, but is very, very, VERY slow.
Pitchfork - Same as the rusty scythe, except with stab damage instead of slash. Dropped by farmers in Maco. Insane crit.
Corrosive Pike - Does rare acid damage. A spear so average, it's okay! Only acquired by craft. Can only take 2 mods. Brawn spear.
Abossegai - An assegai, but better. Has some decent skill scaling but brawn brings out its true potential. Other weapons wish they were an abossegai.
Garden Weasel - Very good spear all around, with good speed and damage, formerly the best spear in the game. Decent skill scaling, but brawn brings out its true potential. Found either from toxic freaks or from the chud-only shop.
Les Paul Drilltar - It's a fucking drill. On a guitar. Gift from admins only.
Chainsaw Lance - Excellent weapon for brawny builds, scales excellent with brawn, but quite slow and hard to speedcap. Can be gotten from Hawthorn or crafted on the Blacksmith forge. It's a little innaccurate.
Titanium Bo Staff - One of the new spears top-tier spears, extremely powerful and fast at doling out beat damage. Very accurate, too. Crafted.
Zap Brannigan - The former best spear in the game. Does boatloads of stab damage and a decent amount of electric while turned on, and mediocre stab while turned off. Requires power adapters. Craft only.
Mods
Elemental - Either butane or shock mods. Only put EMP on specialized weapons to use for ghostbusting. Acid pump kits should be considered for corrosive pikes.
Grip - In PvE, always use balanced grip, to counteract slow speed on the majority of spears. In PvP, drugs should be used to counter-act the slow speed, and you should use a gyro grip instead.
Monowire Serrator - Best used on the Chainsaw Lance, although it works just as well on everything else for brawn builds.
Sharpening kit - Use on pretty much every spear.
Racials
What to consider when picking your racial mutation:
Abomination - A popular combination back when abomination itself was popular. Hideous Freak and abomination both buff endurance and the latter in particular also boosts brawn. The synergy with abomination and drugs also helps tons since spears rely on drugs to overpower their opponents.
Hideous Freak - Should you choose to forego brawn and pick senses instead as your third stat, Hideous Freak by itself should prove to be a worthwhile racial, taking your focus to the levels of endurance whips, at more than 40 without buffs.
Vampire - The buff to brawn takes the brawn-scaling spears to a whole new level, but since vampire is incompatible with the two most popular endurance buffing mutations, there's a net zero gain in endurance. Also, being a vampire sucks.
Zombie - Buffs endurance and brawn, helping you take advantage of brawn-scaling weapons easier while also giving you more of the much-needed to-hit. Zombie also gives some resistance to drug addiction, an invaluable addition to a spearman's arsenal. Zombie's natural slowness means that the slow speed of some spears such as the large scythe or the chainsaw lance, aren't as crippling. On top of all that, the spears' tendency towards tanking out your opponents because of their high parry bonus go hand in hand with zombie's natural tankiness (the soaks and the damage reduction).
Chud - You can access garden weasels much easier than most by simply buying them from the chud-only shop, rather than waiting for another chud to buy it for you or finding it in the toxic dump.
Chromemouth - Chromemouth buffs endurance by 3, a significant buff without many downsides, making it the natural choice if you've been turned off by every other racial. You'll have a sizeable to-hit and some minor bonuses to useful skills. However, you won't really be able to take advantage of Chromemouth's main draw, Zero, because you won't have the cool to pull it off.
Strategy
PVE Bo Staff, Garden Weasel or dual-wielded abossegais can very easily cut down most mobs, use power attacks liberally.
PVP PC2 on the vast majority of spears is a definite bonus in PvP, and the chainsaw lance can cut through most soaks by value of bleed damage. However, its low accuracy can be a turn-off if you're fighting particularly dodgy players. Dual abossegais are brutally strong if you are the brawny type. Garden weasels, bo staves and zap brannigans are accurate, fast and deadly, the top choice in most situations.