• how common are the ingredients to brew powerful poisons such as paralyze and slow? Are they so rare that those poisons become luxury items?
  
• how often do plants respawn?
  
• do damage health poisons become overpowered with fully perked alchemy (ie. one shotting giants)?
  
• can you hotkey poisons?

I ask because I'm thinking of creating a magicless, sneakless, meleeless archer that relies on poisons to help take out opponents he can't kite (beasts), powerful foes (dragon priests), and large groups of enemies.

Dude. Surprisingly enough, I don't know if I'm too A.D.D. or what, but I beat the game never learning how to poison an arrow. I have no idea how to do it.

I specialized in archery too.

Equip the bow then, click on any poison you have, a message will pop up and, then click yes.

1. Not so common, but there are a lot of poisons to be made from different ingredients.
2. Can't give you an accurate answer there but i noticed the plants i gathered from most cities respawn very fast.
3. Not to discourage you but you can play the game efficiently without poisons. They would only add to your repertoire of greatness. I guess that you can rely on poisons if you are weak with your melee weapons or bows at least till you gain enough power to go without them.
4. Yes.

The items are not that rare at all, the more poisons you make, the more common the effect, because you will discover more effects the more you experiment. Each store has a little recipe you can buy as well usin different combinations for certain poisons. If you perk the alchemy to mastery, and get to one hundred, yes it is pretty damned powerful.

1. Paralysis isn't an easy one to stockpile, but not too hard once you learn the areas to gather imp stool and fungal pods. Most effects have a couple common and couple rare ingredients for their effects.

2. Plants in the wild spawn pretty quick. Cells however need like 10 game days of you not showing up to respawn. Reason the stuff in most people's houses never respawn, or like the Arch Mage garden and Riften garden.

3. Nope, though you can loop alchemy enchantments with enchanting potions, than add a smithing potion to make equipment that will one shot a giant

4. Never tried to hotkey poisons, as I never really use them. You can hot key potions, so would just have to try.

Very cool resource for alchemy:
http://rp.eliteskills.com/skyr%20im.html

There' s also now my (very beta, still no domain name) Skyrim Alchemy Workbench ( http://209.46.18.232/wiers.us/skyalcwb/index.php ), which is in some ways more powerful, and in some inferior (though not for long).

To answer the OP's question #1, its actually quite easy to stock up on a reasonable number of paralysis potions. Just head NE from Morthal and walk around picking all the Canis Root & Swamp Fungal Pod you can find. Mix either with Imp Stool (as its typically the easiest to get a hold of, as its present in most caves anywhere in Skyrim) or each-other. Feel free to use Briar Heart or Human Flesh in place of any of those other three, but they are obviously much less common (though rather easy to come by on some quests).

edit- using my own workbench, I found that Slow potions are also pretty easy to make. Any two of deathbell, salt pile, large antlers, or river betty will do. The first three are fairly common (Deathbell found in swamps and graveyards, salt pile is common in stores and crypts, large antlers you get from hunting deer).

edit - WTF was that? HTML tags all barfed up in my post?

Thanks a lot everyone .

Ingredients aren't really that rare if you know what you're looking for

I have like 90 alchemy with about 7 perks in it,
Surprisingly 'River Betty' makes really potent poisons
I forgot what I combine it with but I can make
Poisons for 130 damage with 25 seconds of paralysis
Awesome for a thief/assassin builds

25 seconds?! o_O Is that a typo or is it really that insanely overpowered?

Nope ^.^

lol

Alchemy is awesome. Go for it.