I can't think a nice and wordy way to say this so: For starting and ending saying you are open minded your questions have a heavy bais. I also don't see any relation between your questions and risk vs reward for stalkers.
I am not a dev, but I am going to give my opinions.
1. If you consider the Stalker a 1v1 AT, then any AT without mostly AE attacks is 1v1. The idea that this is a 1v1 AT no doubt comes from that fact that this AT is the easist while solo to choose your battles in the chaos that is the PvP zones.
2. PvP zones are consensual. If anything I think you mean Duels vs Battles. The Arena's are combat with rules applied. The battlefields aren't.
3a. A few things - Assault not working once at stopping placate is a bad example. Teammates don't require a pwer choice, and do wonders for placate. Lastly I completely agree with you that more powers the assault need +res to placate. I'd love to see every power with +res taunt, have +res placate.
3b. I completely disagree about the foils being built into the ATs.
Whats the foil to the Brute? The Defender who keeps the brute forever out of melee range? The Blaster who kills from range before the brute can reach him? Or maybe the scrapper that takes him down before he has enough rage, or lands enough hits?
I feel the ATs in this game are all much more versital then most people think about them. People are getting locked into mindsets about how things should work, they need to stop self limiting themselves.
