It's doable, but it can be better to have a second element which has a touch attack blast available. It's been pointed out to me that a kinetic knight will often prefer full attacks to using gather power - this means the more expensive (in burn) infusions and composite blasts may not matter. Essentially anything other than Earth / Earth or Earth / Aether works, including the options which have poor or no composite blasts like Earth / Air.
If you're going for combat maneuvers then you might want to remember the shield focus feat and guarded charge, or dirty fighting as the initial prerequisite. You won't often want to use power attack or combat expertise, the kineticist works poorly with PA and a tank usually doesn't want to use CE.
If you play an oread, or if you're willing to spend a feat on kinetic invocation, you get some other options for wild talents which may be handy for someone doing battlefield control. Slowing Mud for example.
I think it's worth noting that the wood element's defense goes very nicely with all that armor. ^_^
It's an unexpected choice, but the air element can be very helpful. You wouldnt normally have great ranged options, but at level 6, air can zip all around the battlefield. And since you're using full attacks most of the time, the haste option is very nice.
To be the tankiest tank that ever tanked, Aether seems like a good call. It's defensive talent is very, very good. More HP that replenishes itself is a pretty solid choice. That said Aether lacks any good infusions for the Kinetic Knight. It's a trade off certainly.
Aether just lacks infusions period (which is a deliberate trade off for all the high quality utility they get). Still, pushing and bowling are appropriate infusions for the Kinetic Knight, so you take them at 1st and 5th, and you you spend your 3rd level infusion on draining and beg the GM to include some aether elementals or let you retrain it later.
But regarding the utility feature, one of the things that really appeals to me about the Telekinetic Knight is the ability of to grab Telekinetic Maneuvers with your 8th level talent, since this is a very, very strong option when circumstances dictate that you can't melee whatever; the fighter can just reach for her backup composite longbow, but the Kinetic Knight is sort of stuck here unless they get a ranged attack with a utility talent assuming nothing gets within blade rush range. Sure, you can fly without a potion, but sometimes you want to grapple the far away thing now!
To be the tankiest tank that ever tanked, Aether seems like a good call. It's defensive talent is very, very good. More HP that replenishes itself is a pretty solid choice. That said Aether lacks any good infusions for the Kinetic Knight. It's a trade off certainly.
Well, it depends on what you expect to fight, really.
Earth's DR shaves off damage from pretty much any melee opponent. But it does little to nothing against magic. Aether's HP is less impressive for melee, but it is great for avoiding elemental effects (no attack with riders can really touch you until it eats through the temp HP).
If I remember right, kinetic knight still gets utility talents, so you would do well to grab both. They have good synergy- few things can directly touch you when you have both. And since you have good fort/reflex, you mostly only have to worry about will saves (and there are easy ways to deal with those.
The problem with the Earth/Aether Kinetic Knights is that you don't get an energy blast, and being able to hit touch with your iteratives is very handy since you're 3/4 BAB and don't get weapon enhancements.
The one "ultra tanky" Kinetic Knight I would be interested in is an Earth into Wood taking Positive Blast, but I'm not sure what "other creatures harmed by positive energy" entails. Is that "anything always harmed by positive energy" or "anything that can be harmed by positive energy"? Anything living *can* be hurt by positive energy can't it? The positive energy plane is bad for your health; it's just that constructs would be immune to your blast. At least that's my reading of it.
It's my understanding that the positive blast only deals damage to undead and creatures with negative energy affinity or a similar effect.
The subtle secondary benefit of choosing positive blast is access to wood healer, making your kinetic knight a kind-of sort-of paladin while gaining access to Wood's other powers. Unless you're playing something really undead-heavy like Age of Worms, though, it's a niche option at best compared to aether or water (which is why I didn't mention it earlier).
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If you're going to do combat maneuvers then it will be simpler to be based on Str. At the least it saves you the agile maneuvers feat, and it makes prereqs easier too. If you're going to try TWF as a kineticist - which I do not recommend - then you almost have to be Dex-based.
If you want to control the battlefield with combat maneuvers then you're looking at stopping the enemy moving, which means knocking them prone with trip or overrun, or gambling that you can be good enough with Stand Still. Bull rush has no such useful effect and dirty trick is less definite in stopping people.
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One thing to remember is the awkwardness of infusions. Considering this archetype marries Kinetic Blade and Kinetic Blade Accessories, your form infusions are set for life. However, not every element will even -have- enough substance infusions to fill your infusions gained by leveling. Fire suffers the most, but Aether is kind of tricky too.
As an aside, you can still LEARN other form infusions, you just can't USE them with blasts. Range-boosting form infusions make useful picks in the "dead slots" of Aether because they just so happen to boost the range and functionality of certain Aether utility talents.
Speaking of that, Aether Kinetic Knights still destroy anything they attack with, even in melee. And you need to be holding it, so no tricks with a bag of caltrops. Clubs are free, however, and Quickdraw is a thing. Just make sure to have a Bag of Holding filled to the brim with those suckers.
Strength is your go to stat. The armor and shield are going to add a lot of weight, and you'll need to carry that. Plus, with the low dex bonus of heavy armor, you have less reason to boost Dex. And if nothing else, you're better off when extreme circumstances make it so your blast is unavailable, ineffective, or inefficient.
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Aether damages its object, but a damaged object is still an object. It's not like we are converting matter to energy here. You just shouldn't use anything valuable for your kinetic blade.
The "Damaging Objects" section of the CRB mentions that you cannot damage a rope with bludgeoning attacks, so if you use a rope as your kinetic whip, and choose to do bludgeoning damage does it stay undestroyed?
Alternatively, if you damage your rope, you don't destroy all if it simultaneously just the end you hit something with, so you can unspool more?
Heck just use a spool of twine.
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The "Damaging Objects" section of the CRB mentions that you cannot damage a rope with bludgeoning attacks, so if you use a rope as your kinetic whip, and choose to do bludgeoning damage does it stay undestroyed?
Alternatively, if you damage your rope, you don't destroy all if it simultaneously just the end you hit something with, so you can unspool more?
Heck just use a spool of twine.
The rope bludgeon trick is something that I never heard of before! Thanks, I may have to try that out.
As for destroying portions of the rope? I could see a strong arguement made to the GM for the sake of simple and easy access to a core function, but in a more RAW environment like PFS the rope still counts as one object so it would explode all at once.
For a RAW-oriented environment like PFS I would recommend something like arrows (1 gp for 20) or sling bullets (1 sp for 10) as ammunition because they're cheap (and your attacks hit harder than the archer's) and it's well established that it's a free action to draw one.
I don't think the Telekineticist actually needs to use something very large for a kinetic blade/whip. If you're Kinetic whipping with an arrow, you're probably waving the arrow around at the end of a coil of strands of aether.
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Nothing says destroyed objects explode. A destroyed rope is still an object. I just wouldn't try to climb it.