So having read through the class, as well as every thread on here and the subreddit I thought I may as well lay out my initial thoughts, I wont have a chance to playtest until the weekend but in the meantime here is where I stand:
firstly, this class is cool as hell, I do not want to understate this, its been a long time since a class felt this intrinsically awesome as the kineticist does, Again no gameplay experience yet but on read through the feel of the class is perfect.
Now in no particular order
Blasts: These seem a bit underwhelming. Every other martial in the game has some way to bolster their damage or their accuracy to give them a unique edge, The kineticists do not have that, so while their attacks are competent, they will fall behind basically any other martial when they have their thing going.
Secondly, elemental blasts, I am fine with the physical damage for air water and earth for a baseline but PLEASE offer the option to expand upon these with proper energetic blasts, cold, electric maybe sonic, ideally as level 1 impulse feats so you could grab them with your gate bonuses.
oh also waters crit specialization of "deadly d2" is utter garbage
8 hp and light armor feels a bit limp for a con class, the fact that even maxing out their con apex and all they will still have comparable hp to a normal fighter irks me, i feel like if something is going to be a con class it should be more resilient then this, at least give us the option for medium armor
Speaking of, Con, its just... give us a mechanic to do something with this please, as is we are boosting it out of obligation so that our dc keeps up and thats it, Im not calling for a return of burn but actions that self proc a fort save with risk of consequences could be a cool way to do it.
I am working under the assumption that expert weapons at 7 is an error because "martial proficiency except for exactly 2 levels" makes no sense from a design perspective
Now onto the non blast impulses, first going over the non overload ones, these are really cool actually, there are some stinkers, like the damaging auras that do 1 damage per effective spell level are... basically meaningless, but still overall im pretty positive, at will utilityish abilities for 2 actions that represent roughly half a spell of the same level? sounds good! my biggest problem is that these are all one feat a piece which feels like it will lean into a situation where your build can only do like 3 neat things, or you spent all your class feats on abilities you do not often use. not sure what the middleground is here but its a potential issue i see.
moving then to overload impulses and with them class dc. Again I have not playtested this yet but this looks... not great. The biggest painpoint for me is the action economy, all of these are effectively 3 action routines that hit an aoe for not especially impressive damage, roughly cantrip damage or half a top level spell, my issue here is that unlike your utility impulses, which function well, these "half spell actions" are saddled with awkward action economy tax, as well as worse dc than casters about half the time, meaning that they will often do miniscule damage when mobs all pass or crit their saves. Overmore they are mostly locked into targeting reflex saves for damage, outside of a couple impulses in earth, so they lack the flexibility to target weak saves that casters often exploit to bolster the chance of a spell landing. Summing up, I see damage, action economy, save flexibility, and DC all as potential pain points, they don't all need to be improved but there defiantly feels like there needs to be some give somewhere. Personally I would be happiest if the action economy was loosened up.
also lastly elemental adept is AWESOME but the bulk progression is so slow as to almost make your character feel weaker for having it, like, my level 10 geomancer looks at a one pound rock and has to just shrug "its too big for me boss?" that just sucks all the potential fun out of the ability.
On the whole I really do love the ideas in the class I largely think this is just a matter of numbers tuning more than anything, Its not there yet, but im hopefully optimistic that whatever comes out of this playtest will fulfill my dream of playing a "blow everything up forever" character.