Kinetic Melee: judged and found wanting (Willpower)

Hmm. Since Willpower is the closest thing we get to a regen set for tankers, it may have advantages for them apart from aggro control.

During I11 beta, I commented that Brutes may have been perceiving a much higher performance level than Scrappers than their health difference would suggest because Brutes were testing with essentially Tanker offensive sets which tend, on average, to have higher offensive damage mitigation than the average Scrapper primary. RTTC is basically a race: each target you add increases your regeneration, but also increases the damage you take. If the regeneration is higher than the damage, saturating RTTC is a net win. If the regeneration is lower than the damage, RTTC softens the impact of having more things attack you, but you're still going to die quicker if you try to saturate it.

This means anything that can get the per-target damage down to a level equal to or lower than RTTC's incremental regeneration buff per target is going to have a dramatic impact on anything with Willpower. A relatively small difference in damage mitigation can have a disproportionately high effect. And in particular, that made Willpower almost a completely different powerset for Tankers than Scrappers in I11 beta, when almost no one was testing with ultra-IOed Scrappers (which could have had enough damage mitigation to "cross the RTTC horizon").

My most IO'd out WP scrapper is Spines/WP, and took a somewhat unusual tack which has proven to be quite effective. Almost all of her AoE powers that can take one of several kinds of Chance for Recharge Slow enhancements has been equipped with one. RTTC has one. Quills has one. Caltrops has one. Throw Spines has one. Ripper has one. These were all cheap to add. Together, they work remarkably well, I suspect largely because they tend to reduce incoming damage. This character makes a quite adequate non-AV tank as well, and does not need Willpower to hold aggro. Spines really needs to be ported over to tankers.

This doesn't really mean that Kinetic Melee is anywhere near the top of the heap when it comes to helping WP tankers hold aggro, but it may add to the utility value of the set.

This one particular fact really says more about Willpower than Kinetic Melee. Kinetic Melee's mitigation can sometimes help Willpower much more than most other defensive sets, but that's true of all offensive sets' damage mitigation.