Combat questions

[Tal]

1. Do healing potions used in combat generate hate for the user?   If so, this could allow for some interesting variations of combat strategy.

Not really. By the time you need a healing potion in the fight they're already pretty pissed off at you. ;)

2. Do stealth/invisibility cause monsters to stop chasing a player?   Let's say monster A will keep chasing the player until the player is more then 30 yards away and that the player is currently 15 yards away.  The player then stealths or uses the mage talent for instant cast spell with invisibility.  Would that cause the monster to stop the pursuit?  How about casting fear and then using an invisibility potion?

You can't stealth/invisible while in combat and you remain in combat while being chased.

3. What is the general accuracy rate for offensive spells and melee attacks against same leveled monsters?  Do any stats increase melee accuracy or lower resist chances?

From what I understand resistances aren't still fully implemented. Right now its above 95% from what I've seen for spells. Melee attacks hit most of the time. Some attacks like the Paladin's Holy Strike have a much higher chance of being dodged, parried or blocked. IIRC intelligence affects how quickly you skill up with a weapon. You may want to look at this information:

Strength (STR) - Adds to your Attack Power, Damage-Per-Second (DPS). Strength does not affect Critical Hit chances at all. Strength does not improve your chance to block, but rather the amount blocked when you succeed. This amount is determined in part by Strength (and the other part by your shield).
Agility (AGI) - Increases all characters’ chance to Critical Hit. The amount of the bonus is higher per point on Rogues than other classes. Agility affects dodge. Rogues get more Dodge per point of Agility than other classes. Agility adds directly to Armor Class.
Stamina (STA) - Increases Health points.
Intellect (INT) - Increases Mana points as well as chance to Critical Hit with magic spells. Intellect also grants a higher chance to increase melee skills. (It does not affect trade skills though.)
Spirit (SPT) - Increases Health and Mana regeneration. Spirit affects all characters' Mana and Hit Point regeneration rates in and out of combat. Spirit also increases your chance to ‘proc’ with weapons.

Attack (AR) - Attack Rating.
Power (AP) - Attack Power.

Damage (DMG) - Weapon Damage.
Defense (AC) - Defense Rating.
Armor - Physical Damage Reduction.

4. While soloing, does every class have (or will have) a way to deal with retreating mobs?

Some have more effective ones than others.

5. Can a hotkey macro be made to swap various pieces of equipment during combat?

I don't know truthfully. I poked around a little but could see no mention of being able to do this with a combat. I'm interested to know because it would really help me switch to a two hander to get aggro back when a mage has uncorked a pyro. ;)

6. Do monsters regenerate health/mana while they are being attacked?

They do but not very quickly. After you have run away they really regen fast.

7. Are there different items with manually activated special effects that share the same cooldown timer?  Some examples are health and mana potions or the couple chain armors that replenish rage.

Yes

8. As characters progress in levels, how do monsters scale in comparison as far as their amount of life and damage dealt go?

Its pretty equal until you get to the 40s to 50s where it hasn't scaled as equally. Blizzard is going to be fixing this in the next patch iirc.