To level up hand weapons more quickly, pick a weapon and then work with targets that are in the yellow range. Use the lowest couple of skills on your weapon until just before the target dies, and then use the special skills to finish it off. Takes a little longer but the experience points will be much higher (and they usually wont have done much damage to your health, so you can find another target and start over, usually, without having too waitt for your health to recharge).
With the voodoo doll, as soon as you can, put more skill pts on the skill that allows you to attune more targets. Attune 2 or 3 targets in the yellow range at a time and, because the affect of the voo doo is less when you have more than one attuned, you have to attack them more times and you can get some very high experience pts.
The bugged thug on the platform in Fort Charles is a good weapon leveler but, with no risk, it's boring (besides having to wait for him to respawn each time). I personally like a riskier, faster paced method.
