Creating your poison fencer, by Rockie.

Introduction
One of the deadliest and most feared templates in the game, the poison fencer is one of the most versatile PvP template you could hope to make. The first thing you'll need to create this char is a steady source of greater poison, I found that I went through about 3 greater poison kegs per powerhour. If you don't have an alchemist, make one. With that in mind, lets begin.

Fencing and Tactics
As always, this part is at your discretion. I prefer the jhelom spawn myself, as I have GMed every single one of my melee characters there. It usually takes about 7-8 hours outside powerhour to GM from 30 (bought skill). But again, its personal preference. Some people swear by bone knights and others by rotting corpses.

Healing and Anatomy
For the sake of the essay, lets do anatomy first. By the time you finish fencing and tactics, your anatomy should have passively raised to somewhere around 78-89. From there, you have 2 choices. You can go to the swamps and try to find a magic animal, or you can heal a ghost on a boat. Once you get a passive anatomy gain from healing, stop the boat and begin healing, you should gain .1 anat per application of the bandage, this can only be done in powerhour though, so don't waste your time outside. As for healing, this can be done by simply 8x8ing on a boat. If you don't know how to 8x8, or your not very good at it, gator has given you the hook up.

Magery
Nieves now has me swearing by magery, its fantastic on a warrior character. You can argue all you'd like, but you know as well as I do that having the ability to cast 50 point heals during a mana dump is a life saver. First of all, make sure you have meditation at GM, this will make Magery go alot faster. There are several methods to GM meditation. First of all, you can manadump somthing, put on full plate, get drunk on cider and sail slow forward. [...]
This should take you about 5 hours (possibly 1-2 more, depends on luck). After you GM meditation, make sure you have at least 4.5k of each reg in the bank. Your going to sail slow forward on a boat casting flamestrike on the tillerman. This will take you to about 80. Then your going to cast earthquake 8x8. First powerhour you will go from 30-63, second from 63-80, third from 80-87, fourth from 87-94, fifth 94-98, sixth 98-GM.

Poisoning
Poisoning, the bane of all mages, the hell of all parry warriors. Go find the thief guildmaster and buy poisoning to 30 you'll save yourself a lot of time/money. Got those greater poison kegs I told you about, right? Right. Also make sure you have about 3 full kegs of greater cure, cause until 80.1 skill, your going to be poisoning yourself alot by accident. Set up a secure chest in your house and put 3 bags in it. Fill these bags with as many blades as you possibly can. Now going through each bag individually, poison each blade. Once you get a gain, DO NOT MOVE ON!!! Poison that same blade over and over till the gains stop. You can usually get .3-.7 off each blade that gives you a original gain. Rince and repeat as necessary. You should go from 30-58 first powerhour, and 58-70+ second. 70-80 third. It will take you about 5-6 more powerhours from 80.1 to GM. Once you hit 93, begin using deadly poison, it is expensive, but its worth it in the long run. Especially because if you run a vendor, you can sell dped weps at outrageous prices. Another benefit of GM poison is since you already have GM magery, you can cast DEADLY POISON! Although it is a small chance (roughly 5% if your standing one tile away), its still a chance, at the very least your cast greater poison, which is still deadly. At GM poison your blade also corrodes less making your weps last longer per poison. P-Nut also has some useful poisoning info.

Resist
Magic resist is the same as always, stand on a boat and have your friend casts summon daemon, attack the daemons. Repeat as necessary. From 30-GM resist with 3 casters and 2 healers it takes around 13 powerhours (or at least in my experience). If you have to solo, I recommend reaper valley (just ask sinister saint).

Playing your new Poison Assassin, by Rockie. Ok, so you read my guide on how to make an assassin, good for you. So now your wondering 'what in the heck do I do to become a pretty pretty hate machine?' Thats where I come in.

Using poison as your best friend
There are 4 different types of poison. Three of which can be attained by players. Lesser, Regular, Greater, and Deadly. Before we can decide what potion to use in battle, lets see the effectiveness and relevance of each.

Lesser - loss of approx. 2.5% Health every 2.5 sec. (max 30 hp)

Regular - loss of approx. 5% Health every 2 secs. (max 60 hp)

Greater - loss of approx. 8% Health every 5 secs

Deadly - loss of approx. 15% Health every 5 secs.

Now lets see what conclusions we can draw from this.
Lesser poison is useless. Its not good, not even for mages.
Regular poison is good for mages, not only does it take 5% of health, but it does it every 2 seconds. This is the best possible poison to use when interrupting.
Greater poison and Deadly poison both have a 5 second lapse, plenty of time for a mage to cast cure. Therefore, I suggest only using these on warriors. Greater poison is good because you get more use out of it before having to reapply, deadly poison makes the blade decay faster but it does about 2x as much dmg per time than greater poison. Personally I use greater against warriors because its cheaper, and the weapons last longer. Now in order to use these poisons effectively, you must set a macro to useskill:poison. This saves you valuable time in application of the poison. If your only using one type of poison, set up a UOA macro to useskill:poisoning, target item type: poison potion. This will make it where you only have to click the weapon after you hit the hotkey.

The Perfect Weapon
Since fencing is arguably the most versatile of the melee skills in the weapons department, there is a weapon for every occasion/situation. If they use parry, USE A WARFORK. Warforks pass shields like it isn't even equipped. If they are a mage, naturally you would use a kryss, as my avatar says, regular poison+greater agility+kryss = dead mage. If they run like a little panzy non-stop, it is your DUTY, your DUTY mind you, to use a long spear on their azz.

Against Parry Warriors
Being the God-like poison fencer that you are, you will eat parry warriors alive, simply keep them poisoned. But if they are smart they will have a macro set to unarm the weapon rather than the shield. If by some chance they do unarm the shield, follow and dbl click while poisoning them. Repeat as necessary untill ghost appears. If they do unarm the wep rather than the shield, keep at it. You get about 6 uses per poison potion off your weapon. My advice would be to wait 10 seconds after he heals himself to apply the poison. It takes the average dexer between 11-13 seconds to heal themself, hence, if you wait 10 seconds before you apply, they will waste a heal on curing your poison.

Against non-parry warriors
If they are a warrior and they don't use parry against you, you can officially label them your skank. Use the 10 second trick described in the parry warrior essay and follow them around, if they run around too much (likely so) break out your longspear and throw in a para blow. The only two classes you may have trouble with are pot-whore macers (damn my stamina!) and other poison fencers. Just make sure you carry plenty of pots and you should be fine.

Against mages
Being that you have GM magery, you shouldn't have anything to worry about. As long as your stats are balanced, your a fearless killing machine. When you meet up with a mage, and they attack you, precast Greater Heal. After the finish the initial mana dump which you of course survived through your casting greater heal and applying bandages, drinking pots etc, you have a choice to make. You can go offensive (precast lightning) or you can go defensive (precast heal/cure). If you go offensive, precast the spell of your choice, and bum rush em, when they get low on life and attempt the greater heal, drop the spell. You'll get em.

Against other Poison Fencers
Mostly depends on who has more experience, as with all great things those who have had the most practice will do the best. Try to keep yourself healed. If they play defensive, play more offensive, and vise versa. Develop your own special techniques. Nieves has a copyrighted move he does where he waits till your low on life, and pulls out his spear. After he hits you a couple of good times he releases his precasted ebolt and you take a dirt nap. Ouch. I usually just precast poison, wait for my poison on my wep to hit, after they cure that i immediately drop the casted poison on them, that usually gets them to waste a heal.

Nieves Notes:
When you create this character, I would make her (female assassins are cooler) with 50 poisoning and 50 magery. It will save you on the expense of GMing poisoning (not too mention help your sanity) and you can get Magery GMed that much faster. I would build the character this way:
1) Set your stats at 100Int/100Str.
2) GM Magery.
3) Reset stats to 100str/100dex.
4) GM Poisoning.
5) Reset stats to 100str/dex as necessary.
6) GM the Warrior 4 (melee, anatomy, healing, tactics).
7) Get a set of stats that are mindblast proof and you are comfortable with.
8) Then finish with resist.

Some say do the warrior set first, but I don't like resetting stats more than I have too.

Also, be aware of the smart mage that casts Mana Drain against you. If he does get it off, you are with out mana and might not survive his mana dump.

Hasta.