Hey guys, sorry if these have come up before. I am truly a newbie at this game and I am having some problems with a few things still. Any help will be much appreciated.

Question 1: Roles? Is this the term? Some NPC I clicked on talked about roles or something. My guess is this is some system for characters to switch their Presence from trying to aggro as much as he can or aggro the least amount he can. So better defensive group mates can sort of MMO 'tank" while frail shooter types hang back? I'm not sure. Uhm...so the NPC talked about it, but I can't find the button on the UI that makes me control this feature. At first I thought it was the two build buttons above my hot bar, but that's...uhm...builds? Like for if you want to have a PvE and a PvP build? I don't know what's going on. Need this better explained to me. The NPC did not provide sufficient instruction.

Question 2: Not that I plan to PvP much in cage matches, because man ... the balance is all over the place. Ice seems to dominate. Anyways, I'll be concentrating on burning down the health of one guy and ....out of no where, I no longer have him targeted? Why is this happening? Are there powers that detaunt you and make you un-target them? Not sure what's going on. As if it wasn't already challenging enough to break out of ice and get on someone already. No I gotta rapid fire tab through enemies everytime I lose my target, which seems to be very often.

Question 3: Can you set up customized hotkeys? Not all of my friends I play have Ventrilo (I won't get into why this is), but sometimes, I wanna just have basic "Wait stop!" and "Need help" hot keys made. Considering how quick a fight can accidently spiral out of control from fighting 5 henchmen to 20, I could use every short cut I can to communicate with my non-Ventrilo friends.

Question 4: Speaking of Ventrilo, is there something better and easier to use than Vent? Half my friends have it working fine, the other half spend an hour tweaking settings and we still can't hear them. Is there another service that's not as fickle with drivers and codecs. Something a little more plug and play friendly?

Thanks for the help with any of these questions.

p.s.

Question 5: When trying to break out of a hold, the game says, "Press Z!" Okay, press Z and keep tapping it until you break? Or just press Z once and your character will auto go into "I need to break out" mode? So far, I have just been spamming Z "Track and Field" style. 

Question 1:  Press the B button (or click the icon on the left side of your action bar) to view the builds window.  At the top right there's a drop down list of roles you can choose from.  By default I think it just says "Guardian".  So yeah you can make your presence give you aggro or the opposite, you can use the defense one to give more health and receive more energy from blocking, but attacks will be weaker, etc.
 
Question 2:  I think that person used the teleport travel power, it makes them invisible as they quickly fly away, but it only lasts for a few seconds before they become visable again.

Actually I'd love to know the answer to question 5, I'd assumed that it was a track and field style button mash but seeing as there's a stat for reducing the time that you're trapped in situations like that it's possible you just press it to activate you getting out.

Thanks for the responses so far. Every bit helps.  The "Build" window doesn't exactly have user-friendly labels. Which is odd because mousing over everything else on your character sheet gives you great info on what does what. But the Build window just has a pull down selector but no label on it that says "Roles". Thankyou DOUBLESHOCK for the tip. 
 
As with Question 5, I also posted the same questions on the actual Champions Online forums. Interesting tid bit, you guys responded before the community over there did. :)  
Anyways, I've told over there that you mash on it "Track & Field" style. Perhaps, the stat that is tied to the roots influence how much of the timer bar you reduce when you're mashing on the button. But that's just a guess.

I've found that you dont need to mash Z - but any key 
 
eg - button 1
 
edit - any key that would have performed a function (1 2 3 4 5 etc)