Hopeling

I can't think of any particularly compelling reason that the set will favor either AT, and I say so having played both with TW, albeit briefly. Certain secondaries can still favor one or the other, of course.

Edit: To quote what I was responding to, since there were several intervening posts while I composed.

No, it isn't fair to say, because it isn't true. Any Stalker, with any combination of power sets, can run into their current HP cap with just accolades and a few set bonuses. At that point, any +hp power is completely wasted over the cap. Dull Pain/Hoarfrost/Overload ALWAYS waste part of their benefit over the cap, even unslotted and with no accolades or set bonuses at all. Stalkers only need +33.3% hp to reach their cap, which means they only need 13.3% from sets, which is quite easy; builds can get that much by accident. The Stalker HP cap isn't so much a "we can't really make the most of a high-end build" as it is "did you actually know what the cap was when you made our powers?"
Meanwhile, one Tanker secondary, using a recharge-intensive high-end build, still needs to use Shield/ or Musculature to reach the damage cap under its own power.
These are not comparable situations.

DoT's are generally considered weaker than the same amount of immediate damage, precisely because you might finish off the enemy more quickly with immediate damage. This is why attacks like Gloom and Incinerate do more total damage than similar, non-DoT attacks. I don't know if frontloading Ignite's damage like Burn does would make it too strong, but it would definitely be a buff.

"Tankers aren't the best buffers. So what? Just roll a Defender if you care about that."
"Tankers aren't the best stealthers. So what? Just roll a Stalker if you care about that."
Tankers are in fact not the best buffers or stealthers, and people so interested should indeed probably play Defenders or Stalkers.
Now hypothetically let's suppose that, say, a database typo buffed Controllers to be the toughest AT.
"Tankers aren't the toughest AT. So what? Just roll a Controller if you care about that."
In this case, Controllers being the toughest AT would be unintentional and directly contrary to basic design principles, so the "so what?" statement is faulty.
Plugging other words into a sentence does not guarantee that the sentence remains meaningful in the same way. You would like us to be straw men, but nobody is making the argument "Tanker damage is already this way and therefore it is balanced." Rather we are saying "it is already this way, and it is balanced."

The important distinction between your two sentences I've quoted is that Brutes are intended (note the distinction from "were originally intended") to hit harder than Tankers, just as Defenders are intended to buff better, and Stalkers are intended to sneak better. Tankers were not, however, explicitly designed to be trumped by Brutes - or anyone - at holding aggro.

Fair enough. When you said a temporary resist boost I was thinking of something like this:
Attack fires, and says "Imma hit you with melee damage in 1 second!"
At t=0.9s, your melee resist toggle applies a res buff.
At t=1s, the damage hits, and the toggle's resistance reduces the damage.
At t=1.1s, the toggle's resist boost expires.
...which would create lots of problems with timing the resist boost correctly, as well as any attack that lands between .9 and 1.1 being mitigated even if it shouldn't be, and if an AoE attack is landing at the same time, its resist boost would go off too, and you'd get twice the resistance against both attacks. So, just a whole can of worms.

Anyway, although it isn't workable without new mechanics, a lot of recent power sets have had new mechanics - disintegration, acceleration, combo levels, Momentum - so this one isn't totally a pipe dream, depending on how hard exactly it would be to implement (this is where the SCR comes in).

I don't think anyone except a moderator can close a thread, it'll just drop off the front page once people run out of things to say. And then if somebody at Paragon codes a positional resist power at some point, you can necro it up and post "I told you so!"

...even though you also have resistance to being engulfed in flames (AoE resist)?

Why do you say things like this so often when it's your most easily refuted point? Lots of people play tanks. I see them all the time. We've got a twenty-one-page thread right here full of them. Apparently, lots of people DO want the job. Anyone who wants a taunt and doesn't already have one in their primary takes the presence pool (see: Tankerminds, Crab tanks, Scrapper tanks).

YOU don't want the job. YOU feel like Brutes and Scrappers are stealing from you. We get it. Can you stop projecting your own opinions onto us and everyone else?

Edit: Words out were of order

All the VIP perks including Incarnate access is apparently not enough to make subbing attractive to SchroedingerCat. All the VIP perks minus Incarnate access will be even less likely to attract subscriptions. If there were an Incarnate license, I'd drop to premium and get the license myself; I'm quite sure I could get the other features I use for $10/mo or less, since I already have everything from the rewards tree. But I also know that less subscriptions would be bad for the game.

By the way, minor nitpick, there is no AE license. There was one in beta but it never made it to live. Premiums can only gain access to AE through reward tokens.

Edit: And since the OP specifically mentioned he hoped for solo incarnate options, I don't think he'd agree with the trials-only suggestion. And if you're going to count discounts for buying a year at a time, you should also count discounts for buying points in bulk.

I'm not sure what you even mean by this. What is a primary and secondary damage? There is no such thing. They all apply equally.

That's a pretty short list for three times the price ($15/mo vs $5/mo), especially since First Ward isn't actually VIP-exclusive and so doesn't belong on the list.

Yep, snipers have huge perception, but they don't completely ignore stealth. If you have 65 feet of stealth, you can get 65 feet closer to a sniper before they start shooting you. Drones and such don't see non-stealthed people from 150 feet, but once you enter their perception range they'll see you whether you're stealthed or not.

Accuracy and damage buffs are calculated at the start of the attack (for example, Knockout Blow will do full damage even if Rage crashes halfway through the cast), but resistances are applied when damage is dealt. You can see this when, for example, a Paragon Protector uses Unstoppable partway through your finishing attack.

Your pseudocode example doesn't match up with the explanation you've given. The pseudocode has a separate variable for positional resist, and adds it to the typed resist if applicable to find the total resist value it should use, which I thought is what we're trying to avoid? There's no temporary resist boosting going on at all in the example you wrote.
A similar pseudocode writeup of the current system would have no MeleeResist variable (presumably fetched from the target's attributes, meaning it would have to be a combat attribute, meaning you need to add a MeleeResist stat), and no tempSmashResist to calculate. It would fetch smashResist and use it directly.

Also note
should be a min(), not a max(). And presumably the 90 is replaced by the appropriate value for other ATs?

Does Full Auto check tohit for each tick? I don't have an Assault Rifle character so I don't know about that specific power, but I know other multi-hit powers like Hail of Bullets use a single tohit check.
As far as the game engine is concerned, I don't know of any distinction between primary and secondary effects/damage types. Fire Sword is both a lethal attack and a fire attack, neither is the primary or secondary type. Occasionally an attack's flags don't match its damage types - for example, Fire Ball does part smashing damage, but is only flagged Fire and AoE - but that's a different thing. Levitate, for example, is flagged Psi but does only Smashing damage.

Er... I'm confused by this statement. Were you thinking of having resists temporarily spike upwards each time you're attacked? That sounds very difficult in terms of timing, and would easily lead to attacks being mitigated by the wrong resistances/multiple resistances (ranged attack hits while your melee resist is active, for example).

Currently, it does not, because no damage of any kind carries any vector of any kind. Presumably, though, if we're adding the ability to do that, it should be possible to store the variable for a few seconds while the DoT ticks.