Come help a returning player pick a prof...

[Ajeukkwra]

Edit: decided to grit it with the MP instead of starting from scratch, thanks for the advice though

[Baby]

Imho,
Advi and Fixer are great proper-dmg-with-self-preservation toons. I had a lot of fun leveling both solo or in random teams. Crat comes right after, but as you said, they can be squishy in lower levels and until Carlita pets are a pain.

Cost factor, I'd say Advi -> Crat -> Fixer while Adv being cheapest. But in general they're all three not very expensive. (That of course depends a lot on how much you actually want to achieve yourself and how much you're going to buy/pay for.)

Hope that helps a little

[Ajeukkwra]

Some nice info there, thanks

A melee advy had crossed my mind, possibly a trox with an mp for company to bridge the nanoskill gaps while levelling. I'm guessing with 1he the weapons available with all expansions that melee > ranged in terms of dd for advys generally speaking?

[Baby]

As Melee you'll definitely have better weapon support yes. Especially <100, where Ranged can be really ugh. No idea about the dmg comparison though. I would say Melee is better, but can't prove it with actual numbers. In mid lvl PvP Melee wins too.
As a Trox, an MP on the side is probably a good idea. You'll need NCR ^.^