I wouldn't completely rely on hunter's strenghts, since it's a new class and might get nerfed in the future a lot, or the ranger on the other side might get upgrades.
For a long time I've been thinking that they will add lvl30 sets rather than 22 24 26 etc; 20 is a rounded up level, 30 is too, and since there havent been any cc sets between them, lvl30 seems like it. Also wouldn't mind all those fun unique armor parts for cc (lvl16) at higher levels. It's still fun to wear them at high levels, but it would be even cooler to wear them and still benefiting from stats.
4. I'm pretty sure they disabled crits for secret link.
5. Barskin/heal shield yes, otherwise higgs is right too
7. You should try to reinstall the game. And make sure you have an email assigned before uninstalling
Depends on how much effort you wanna put in. Those kinda players who expect to get rich and +10 in a month or two won't find anything good in it. (Without buying mcoins ofc) Otherwise yeah, return. Another event is comming up, and making gold is easier with the two latest ayvondil expansions. There's plenty of content but you gotta spend some time on the game and gear up.
I think rangers won't get a shield, for balance purposes. While it might help in such situations, all I can say to this is that you should look out for better tanks. Even with aggro at 1/5 (gonna level that up tho) I never had issues keeping the boss on myself. Most tankers forget to use their aggro skills, I've had that happen in parties while playing other classes.
Smaller pots sound better than pausing, lets say you do daily quests on irselnort, use the pot, collect all the stuff with another char and then just log to turn in the quests, you'd keep the buff for days even if you did kill mobs quests.