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.

Advantages

 * Huge top-end damage. In terms of pure numbers, brawn spears are some of the hardest-hitting weapons in the entire game when maxed out.
 * Weapon variety. Spears has a much wider range of viable weapons than most classes, which can also take a wide range of mods. Even for skill spears, there's plenty of choice.
 * Good at parrying. Most spears are PC2, and all spears gain a bonus to parrying; +5 on PC2 spears and +2.5 on PC1 spears. This is great against any opponent with low dodge or low to-hit, since your parry abilities will outweigh their defences.
 * Grabbing synergy. High brawn, reflexes, endurance and the power of the abossegai make your a real menace in PvE and PvP alike, assuming you can land it.
 * Drug-friendly. Spears classes have high endurance, meaning you can use coke and speed to buff your stats with much less risk.

Disadvantages

 * Spears are heavy. Weight clogs up your inventory and debuffs your dodge.
 * Spears are fussy. Most spears demand buffed stats before they hit their stride; otherwise, they're just mediocre. They're also very hard to speedcap, usually requiring 31 reflexes. Drugs are key to helping spears fulfil their potential.
 * Low to-hit. Compared to other classes, spears are somewhat inaccurate, even when maxed out.
 * Hard to replace. A non-problem for carebears, but losing a spear can hurt PvP players. Many good spears are craft-intensive or awkward to replace compared to other classes.
 * No PC0 option. You have no way of forcing high-dodge PC0 targets to parry you, so you pose little danger to them - they'll just dodge you forever.

Notable Weapons
A more exhaustive list can be found on the Weapons page.

Military Fork - The first spear for newbies who pick the spears class with zero XP. Nothing amazing, but it'll punch through chuds just fine until you get something else. The Rusty Spike Spear is also acceptable slightly later into the game if you really can't get hold of anything else.

Large Scythe - Crafted, scales with brawn. Can reach 3.0 speed easily enough and gets fair to-hit. Caps just under 55 slash, plus some free stab.

Pitchfork - Scales with brawn, dropped by farmers in Macero, and freaks in the Toxic Dump. Similar to the Large Scythe, but with stab damage, no secondary damtype, roughly .5 slower, and a massive crit rate. Trivial to replace if lost.

Corrosive Pike - Crafted, scales with brawn, does rare acid damage, and gets okay to-hit. Can only take two mods; one of these should be the monowire to max out the acid damage. Terrible in PvE because nothing's weak to acid, but scary in PvP because of its exotic typing. Difficult to craft.

Abossegai - Scales with brawn. Very high minimum damage, and caps out in the high 40s. Also one-handed, leaving the other hand free for other mischief or powerful dual-wielding. Farmed from Abominations in the Necropolis.

Willy Pete - Crafted, scales with brawn, one-handed. A dubious pick. Max damage caps at around 50, but minimum damage is only three, and lots of things soak burn damage. Often bad for PvP because lots of people wear leech. In PvE, only nullianac packs are weak to burn, and the abossegai is just plain better for its consistency.

Garden Weasel - Scales with brawn and skill. Gets good to-hit and good speed, is very lightweight, slash caps in the mid-40s, plus a fair minimum damage of 9. Found either from toxic freaks or from the chud-only shop.

Chainsaw Lance - Scales with Brawn. Can't take any grip mod aside from grip tape, and suffers an innate to-hit penalty. Tough to speedcap at 31 reflexes. When maxed out, gets 6-55+ slash damage and 4-8 bleed - all at 2.6 speed. Terrifying against anyone you can actually hit with it.

Titanium Bo Staff - Scales with skill. Crafted and a huge pain to make. Recipe is hard to acquire and the crafting itself is tedious. Fast and very accurate by spears standards. Damage caps at around 40 beat. Can't take a monowire serrator or sharpening kit.

Zap Brannigan - Scales with skill. Difficult to craft, but gets excellent to-hit. Stab damage caps somewhere in the 40s, plus a free 6-16 shock. Good for PvP against people not expecting the shock damage; garbage in PvE because nothing's weak to shock. Can only take the sharpening kit and a grip mod of your choice.

Luftspeer - This thing's a footnote. Once-per-roll reward for killing a boss on the Das Kochenhammer. Looks cool, but it's almost identical to a modded assegai with a shock generator. Gets an extra 1-5 shock damage, but inferior to an abossegai, which is also way easier to replace.

Modding
Elemental - Stick with common sense. Butane kit on the Willy Pete. Consider the acid pump kit on the corrosive pike, but beware that with that and a serrator you'll have no room for one of the high-value grip mods. The Zap Brannigan sadly cannot take a shock generator.

Grip - Gyro is never a bad choice, since your gimmick is your parry and that rolls off of your to-hit. Balanced grip is very convenient for PvE when you can't be bothered to drug, however. The Chainsaw Lance can't take a grip, and may want to mod your Corrosive Pike's two slots without a grip.

Monowire Serrator - Unless you're non-Brawn spears, this is always a good choice. Zap Brannigan and Titanium Bo Staff won't accept it, though.

Sharpening kit - This is a straight buff, so stick it on any spear that will take it (except the Corrosive Pike).

Racial Synergy
Abomination - A popular combo back when abomination itself was popular. Extra endurance and brawn, and the drug addiction immunity helps you lean on drugs to mess people up.

Hideous Freak - Excellent for sense spears; lets you reach more than 40 focus without buffs. Still good for brawn spears, where your stress immunity lets you spam grabs and focus abilities.

Vampire - Enables brutal top-end damage for brawn-scaling spears, but is incompatible with Hyperimmune and Billygoat, so you get no bonus endurance out of it; the +4 from Vampire is just equivalent to what you'd have gotten anyway. The cost of Vampire is high, and for Spears, it's just not worth it.

Zombie - Extra brawn and endurance contributes a lot to your damage and to-hit. Drug addiction resistance also works in tandem with your Endurance. Since zombies are slow anyway, the low speed of spears isn't such a big deal. A very tanky build than can outlast (and outgrab) a lot of things, especially in PvE.

Chud - You can farm Garden Weasels from the unique chud shop for players with much better builds than you. That's it; Chud itself provides little advantage to Spears.

Strategy
PvE - Brawny spears can lean very hard on their and the abossegai; compared to other classes, soloing ants and basilisks is very easy. High top-end damage is good against turtles, and the bo staff is great against junkers. Grabbing nullianacs and focusing their gulfhounds down first is also very strong.

PvP - Reliance on parry is a mixed blessing. High-dodge opponents who bring the right parry class (PC0, or PC1 against anything but an abossegai) will just laugh you off. Against low-dodge opponents or people who equal your PC, parry is strong and the high, varied damage is good at cutting through armor. High wrestle spearmen can spam accurate abossegai s forever. Remember to max out your drugs before every fight.