[Longes]

Also for sustained things, remember focused concentration works for technomancers as well.  And as they don't have access to sustaining focuses it is arguably better for them than mages.  The technomancer in our game is rocking the matrix pretty hard. 

This is more funny and not a indication of  how good hackers are, but in a published 4e/5e/ adventure a hit squad comes at you wired to incinerate with thermite charges to destroy the evidence of their bodies.  They go off when their bio-monitors register them as dead on unconscious, 4 of them died before they got to fire a shot the last one was trying to manually activate his device to no avail as the technomancer had shut that one off so they could interrogate him.   Go go wireless matrix.

Wireless matrix is awesome indeed

About Focused Concentration. At which level does your technomancer has it? Which forms is he using with it?

[Pollution]

Oh, and Pollution... It's not nice - telling me my own words from Reddit http://www.reddit.com/r/Shadowrun/comments/1p7ciz/sr5_complex_form_analysis/.

Actually, I thought you summed it up better than I could on that post.  So yeah, I copy pasta'd that bit about Puppet and Cleaner.  Cause, you're right on that. 

now, as to:

3.a) It does lower the maximum.

per the book, page 95:

Cyberware and bioware augmentations are not for
everyone. The physiologies for magic users and technomancers
respond poorly to the loss of Essence that
accompanies these augmentations. In game terms, this
means that any fraction of Essence loss reduces a Magic
or Resonance attribute rating by 1. This means that if a
magician with Magic 5 decides to buy and install some
cybereyes (Rating 4), their Essence will go from 6 to 5.5
due to the Essence cost of the cybereyes, and the magician
will also lose a full point of Magic, leaving them
with a Magic attribute rating of 4. The character can then
lose another half a point of Essence, taking him down to
5.0, without a penalty to Magic, but if he drops below
5.0, his Magic rating is going to lose another point.

In other words, not the max, the rating.  It's different from EVERY other edition of SR, I know, but that's the way it is.  you can then re-buy your Res back to 5 or 6 with no penalty.  The ONLY thing that affects your maximum is Submersion.  Nowhere in the book does it say that your ESS is your max RES/MAG.  Yes, that's how it USED to work, but it doesn't work that way now.

As to the rest...  well, some people think that TMs are inherently weak.  And no amount of describing the tricks you can do with them will convince them otherwise.

I've got a TM in my group, and have used his stats (sub-par by most table standards) to test some sample runs out.  And using some of the above CF's and Sprites,..  he wiped the floor with them.  Some of the sample deckers on this board, well....they got through too....but it took em a LOT longer.  From an Overwatch Score standpoint, the TM pulled on average a 15 for a long, complicated hack and the Decker pulled a 25. 

TM = Ninja
Decker = Brute force.

To put it in other archetype examples:

Technomancers are to Deckers what Physical Adepts are to Street Sams.

[DigitalZombie]

In other words, not the max, the rating.  It's different from EVERY other edition of SR, I know, but that's the way it is.  you can then re-buy your Res back to 5 or 6 with no penalty.  The ONLY thing that affects your maximum is Submersion.  Nowhere in the book does it say that your ESS is your max RES/MAG.  Yes, that's how it USED to work, but it doesn't work that way now.

page 278 mentions the max rating drops whenever magic drops. And page 250 mentions the "same" thing for technomancers. (actyally it says essence is your max resonance, but it doesnt say magic is. I would personally treat resonance the same way as magic in that regard.

[Shinobi Killfist]

Also for sustained things, remember focused concentration works for technomancers as well.  And as they don't have access to sustaining focuses it is arguably better for them than mages.  The technomancer in our game is rocking the matrix pretty hard. 

This is more funny and not a indication of  how good hackers are, but in a published 4e/5e/ adventure a hit squad comes at you wired to incinerate with thermite charges to destroy the evidence of their bodies.  They go off when their bio-monitors register them as dead on unconscious, 4 of them died before they got to fire a shot the last one was trying to manually activate his device to no avail as the technomancer had shut that one off so they could interrogate him.   Go go wireless matrix.

Wireless matrix is awesome indeed

About Focused Concentration. At which level does your technomancer has it? Which forms is he using with it?

He started with level 3, as he wanted codeslinger as well.  He has bumped it to 5 in game with karma.  Its usually used with either diffusion or infusion of matrix attribute firewall.  When providing a solid passive defense to the party he threads up the firewall on his comlink he uses as a hub, when he is in a position to drop that like on remote hacks he will use it for the duration of a his hack on the fly with diffusion of firewall.  He has used it with resonance veil once when he created the illusion that he had logged off while he hid again.  Still not sure if that was legit or not, but I accepted it as it seemed a solid use for an illusion. 

[Longes]

He started with level 3, as he wanted codeslinger as well.  He has bumped it to 5 in game with karma.

That's 12 + 16 = 28 Karma. On the equialent of Sustaining Foci 5.

[Shinobi Killfist]

Yeah, at level 5 ifor him ts kind of a break even point but as the only sustaining option they have outside of sprites which are a bit more short term its a solid investment I think,  I wish mancers had some focus equivalents but they don't.  I rarely use them on a mage, but they are solid optimization tools.