Savos

Soft-capping anything makes a mockery of any semblance of difficulty.

They already did this (partially) by granting the fitness tree to everyone. I doubt the developers rebalanced all the sleep powers in the game to account for this though. Why do you think support will now be able to just ignore mez anyway? At best they can get some resistance, but since you keep forgetting (although now you at least put both in your statements...) that resistance does not equal protection, thus you still get hit with it for some number of seconds.

One other thing since you think you "need" -10 protection, try turning off your mez toggle/click and pick up Acrobatics (a paltry -2 hold only protection) and just run that for a bit and see how often you get held. Still going to get stun/sleep though you rarely get held even with such little protection, especially since you get some crazy high resistance to go with (which no current melee mez protection power provides that I know of).

Also, to flip an earlier comment around, why keep mez at all if 40%+ of the characters can completely ignore the mechanic already?

I really wish I could put the protection above in something like 72 point font.

Protection does not nor should it ever mean the same as resistance. Yet you keep claiming I somehow support this for some unknown reason.

A few things:

A) Mez protection for all melee classes is too high. Disregarding your 1 in a million chance (effectively) in your examples, melee protection doesn't fail.
B) Mez for anything without protection has two potential results: death in 5 seconds without chance of response or doing nothing for 10-15-20+ seconds.

What I would like to see:

1) Melee mez protection reduced to something like -3, enhanceable to -5 as well as providing something akin to a +50% resist to duration (e.g. 66.66% of normal duration base), enhanceable. Perhaps even modified by AT multiplier to protect those tanks that need mez protection that is overkill in 99.9% of the game.
2) Overall duration reduced on players via either global resist, achievable set bonuses or a global nerf to mob mez.

The reasoning is such that if implemented, melee must be aware of mez, though can still just ignore the huge majority of it, while limiting the case of 10+ seconds of standing around doing nothing for anything lacking protection (which is fine surprisingly enough!).

And contrary to what you believe about my "so does everything else" was intended to be for every other melee defense set. For non-melee with limited defenses it has some huge variability based on power set choices.

So is everything else!

It's for anything really. Fulcrum Shift really annoys the hell out of mobs especially if you use it at the most opportune time (AKA right after or just as everyone gets to the pack). Having a lot of defense allows you to survive the expected return fire without dying. Stealth and the related stuff in that pool is generally terrible. With soft cap defense to S/L you can live with just the partial stealth from the travel IOs.

Teleport is a flavor choice of course but keep in mind what you give up. Leaping pool is quite good at giving additional survival because of both the knockback protection and hold protection and resistance. Both of which will be very painful if you attempt to use fulcrum shift in melee range (the best place). Trying to be nice and free up power choices for those people that don't have something is ... why? They made bad characters and unless you have real life friends that need it ... well I would just tell them to change their thinking :P

Attempting to play kinetic like a bad empath will just end in failure more often then not. Yes it is nice that you can help them out by teleporting them to safety but doing so means you are likely not helping out anyone who is still alive. I dropped those powers for this reason.

This works well for anything. The AoE potential is pretty bad for energy, especially on a defender so the primary powers are the first 3 pretty much. You can swap around for the cone AoE but it's pretty much the opposite of what you want the mobs to do. When they cluster you win. When the scatter you die. Choosing two builds is completely viable, though I don't see what else you might need here really. Kinetics just doesn't stop unless you take a hit thats bigger then your health pool (twice in a row). The heal is a monster and is for everyone in melee range.

Fighting pool is for everyone that wants a tougher character. Kinetics thrives in melee so you want to be able to take as much as possible without dying. Hence super jump. Super jump is in my opinion the best option because it provides vertical travel as well as access to the insanely cheap and amazing combat jumping and awesome acrobatics. Both very effective powers for anything that has no mez protection and is expecting to be shot at a lot.

The powers at the end are generally fluff. With all the extra slots you could dump the stuff (sans Scorpion Shield if you want to keep S/L softcap anyway) and get a pet or get an immobilze or hold or whatever. I wouldn't worry about endurance too much either. Transference is a full bar every 8-9 seconds. Unless you are extremely lavish with endurance usage you will not have a problem.

Ah the playstyle part. This is quite important as well. Siphon speed will cap your running speed as well as providing recharge. Unless you are in dire need of the semi-stealth super speed provides, it's an easily skipped power.

Regarding powers and such and forgetting them: kinetics doesn't stop. Ever. If you ever aren't doing something you probably should be. The first things to drop are increase density and the stealth skills to others. They take way too long to put on people and provide minimal sustained benefit. Do not drop ID however as it is quite useful when some one does get mezzed. It is also an excellent mule for IOs.

After you run out of time to use ID/Grant Invis, the next one to drop is (sadly) speed boost. There are some cases where it is quite useful (Granite tanks and such) but only if it doesn't cut into Fulcrum Shift, Transfusion or Transference. Defenders probably want to put a higher preference to speed boost then blasting but do not forget to blast! You have a full secondary of very good attacks. Nova at damage cap will wreck a spawn and anything at damage cap provides a solid hurting on mobs.

Assault is pointless for kinetics. Really. Vengeance is just a mule in this build though it can be of use occasionally. Kinetics in general sucks at keeping people alive through bad situations. It is great at sustaining, but saving a bad situation is ridiculously hard as kinetics. Kinetics answer to everything is MORE DAMAGE.

Kinetics when played fully is probably the busiest you can possibly be in the game across every AT. My main Sonic/Kinetic Corruptor uses about 11* different buttons for abilities during normal fighting. I don't know of many other ATs that even come close to that. Maybe a MM.

* - Shriek, Scream, Shout, Howl, Siren's Call (lovely AoE), Siphon Power, Fulcrum Shift, Transfusion, Transference, Speed Boost, Increase Density. Also available is Screech, Aim and the Nuke though much less commonly used. Kinetics is busy.

I can't possibly imagine needing more accuracy then what that build gives. I run a similar build on a Corruptor that doesn't even have tactics and on the new TFs it's still fine.

The global accuracy bonuses are crazy and slotting the Kismet to hit buff is a huge boost right there.

I give up. Attempting to reason with you is just as productive as arguing with a brick wall.

Protection does not nor should it ever equal resistance (or shorter duration).

Understand that for once please!

It's both.

Bugged in that it behaves unlike any other proc in the game (even relative to itself!). Awful (in current implementation) only provides 20% resistance for 10 seconds when using click powers and is only 20% resistance.

Which is still bugged/awful.

You aren't far enough ahead. No matter how fast those support guys go, they still take non-zero time to kill stuff. After 1-2 AoEs drop (or even an AoE control) go prime the next pack. Make use of those ungodly defenses your AT has to prepare the next group for melting.

Pick up super speed or just ninja run or something. As a benefit of being ahead of them you get to use your AoEs too!

In short, go faster and stop lolly-gagging around trying to get super insane damage on the boss that will already be dead by the time your power animates.

Melee brings a lot to the team if built and played correctly. Sure all support teams can melt spawns very fast but it is still going to be less effective unless you have a capable melee (anything) that can lead the charge, take the alpha and begin clustering mobs.

You do not need taunt or even a taunt aura to do this, just recognizing when the mob pack is finished and get to the next one.

Essentially, play redside brute style as all melee team characters if you have an abundance of support. This alone makes things many times faster having this additional capability that no support can do effectively.

But, this is difficult. And many tanks/brutes/scrappers/stalkers are timid at fighting for some time because they slot incorrectly and don't make use of their defenses.

Player skill and game mechanics issue pretty much. The game doesn't punish bad melee builds until they get into teams so they go back to soloing where they kill fast. Additionally, they do not develop skills that actually let them be useful on a team. Quite the bad situation to be in.

Geez, I never noticed that. Guess I'll have to change my attack order then and prioritize Howl before Siren's Song.

It still does quite respectable damage at damage cap, something like 1/2 of Howl (essentially just the energy part).

What? You aren't a programmer, ok... If they choose to do it, they would fix any bugs they see quite quickly should the need arise.

The current mechanic is a design decision from the original programming of the game, not from any engine limitation. Such reasoning has no place in this discussion, especially since Arcanaville indicates that it is indeed possible.