There's stuff in that post I made 4 years ago that I'd say differently today, but on the point of pepper spray I still think it's useful. RFs are usually better, but in a level with a lot of long, flat corridors, pepper spray tends to work better than RFs as a chasing weapon, due to its range and speed. For situations other than chasing its a pretty useless (and actually slow) weapon though. Its one of the more specialized weapons in the game.

As for carrots, a battle level with 10 carrots is probably going to be a slow and tedious duel. But I think a decent amount is still a very good idea... certainly more than 1 or 2. It depends on the size of the level really. Also, respawn time is a good thing to consider: I think with carrots, faster is probably better. 15 or 20 secs.