Nightshade: Questions and questions

I've always built my own templates (amongst all toons), with the exception I usually find a starting point of whats been done and go from there. I'd personally, but not through experience prefer to not run legendaries(no weaponcrafter for one lol)

1. Weapon choice:
Is pierce or blades optional: I've seen a lot of recent templates for blades because they are easier to make, but I'm not sure if there's a cap for dex for defense purposes. If there's not or if there is something I'm missing, what does blades have over pierce? Wouldn't that be a decent loss of defense through the lack of templated dex?

2. Item use and proc minimums:
I've read the post somewhere below in here for the minimums on procs and /uses to run? I've done a lot of research (through forums, not testing unfortunately), and there have been lots of opinions, but so far it seems like a basic for a template starts with SoM for the use2, Astral Legs for the aoe dehaste, less than or equal to to 2 crafted pieces as gloves and boots only with the rest being dual-procs from slayer, new epic, or galla chest, a Ring of Tarka'oz for melee resists. I saw a mention of a "WH" ,but still haven't nailed what that function is.
Im currently carrying Bounty point speed buff, endurance regen, superior elixir of instant heal, heroism, water breathing. I hadn't been running celerity at all either, but seems a necessity too. /facepalm

3. CL Abilities
The guardian CL abilities. 11% Parry buff, Damage add, and ABS buff all on 5 minute re-use timers. I wasn't running those.. lol

4. Alchemy vs Merchant:
I saw mention of possible crafted poisons are better than merchant? I have a mentality of merchant poisons were fine (first 50 in classic is a NS). I have an alchemist, but I'm not sure if there are benefits of crafted over merchant purchased poisons.

5. Weapon choices:
Legendaries build a template around those.
Pierce is Astral Meph fang or slayer for OH?
Blades is pretty much slayer or OH with MHI through maybe pictslayer, cuuld fang (which is all I could afford upfront to swap with), fine steel long sword, or astral blade of illusions.

6. Quickness:
Race dependent, just make sure to have 250 buffed for ..4.2? cap swing speed with haste/celerity?

7. Spec:
For me seems to be where you just gotta do your own research and find a playstyle that fits you. Lots of versatility here.

8. Poison use:
Get all your debuffs out, drop a LB, then pray to RNG gods for styles to stick.

If I'm missing anything worth adding or anyone has any advice please let me know. I'm trying to decide on where to start building my template, so if you have one you'd like to post here, please feel free as well.

Last, I hope this may help some others from searching all over the place for information.