Best secondary pool for kinetic melee?

So I'm playing a KM/SR brute, and I just hit lvl 10.

I'm noticing I seem pretty damn squishy for a brute, and I get in trouble fighting enemies one level above me.

Is there a better setup for Kinetic Melee brutes? Which secondary works best for them?

I havent played CoH/CoV in over a year so I don't know all the changes that were made, other than the new power types and they made fitness something everyone gets.

/SR is squishy until you get to SOs

Recommendations:

Invul
Willpower
Dark
Elec

Anything with resistance will synergize well; the -Damage components will layer on top of your resistances.

To be completely honest, any set based on defense will always feel squishy until slotted with SOs. Especially when there's no heal available. SR especially, since its other form of mitigation, the scaling resists, are incomplete until at least the mid 20s as well.

Early game defense sets rely heavily on being able to defeat before defeating and pop heals to keep going.

As a Brute, your best defense will be keeping Fury up as much as possible and keeping a lot of oranges and greens in your tray (and purples, but the problem usually is that your defense is being debuffed, and again at low level, your def debuff resist isn't enough yet). With Fury at a mid-to-high level, enemies shouldn't be lasting long enough to land enough consecutive hits to be a major issue, and otherwise you just need to keep from being debuffed much.

If you're playing Praetorian to start, the enemies are tougher than hero or villain side to start due to buffs and debuffs.

Stick with it, it'll be a good combo post SO.

Starting Praetorian, I found the missions easier as a control-type character rather than a melee type character, simply due to the make-up of the enemies, but it'll matter less later.

I recently made a Kinetic/Willpower Brute. Just by hunting I made it to level 8 in less than a day. Kinetic melee provides a ridiculous amount of attack power, and willpower provides a huge amount of defense and also Regen.

By level six I only had the auto-run Health power and the Auto-run Defense power. Along with just this and kinetic melee I was able to scrap groups of 4+ reds at only level six and have my health never drop below 50%, not to mention also having my defense powers unslotted.

I would recommend willpower with 10000% guarantee that you'll be satisfied!

Well... I actually have a KM/Stone Armor brute that is probably THE most survivable brute you could roll.

Lvling can be a pain if you don't have a regular balanced group you team with, but granite is oh so worth it. With Tough I have +85% Resistance to S/L and 60% to everything else. you will have to invest in some sets like Kinetic Combat and Luck of the Gambler, but I absolutely love KM and Stone is such a sturdy build.

If you can overcome the -rech and -movt speed you are golden.