Klutzy

That sounds like my experience with my recent Psi/Bioarmor Brute. The AoE on the T9 is tiny, plus it comes out slow with the damage on the very end, so you frequently waste it or miss completely. It also makes for an iffy opener, since it doesn't get you much rage, hits only things very close to you, and has a slow animation that eats up a lot of Build Up time. The weird disconnect between the smooth, quick psi blade skills and the slow, clunky telepathic attacks is both thematically and mechanically frustrating. Boggle isn't explicitly bad, but serves no useful function in a game where minions and LTs are no threat to you anyway. Greater Psi Blade is very satisfying, but Psi Blade Sweep also suffers from a frustratingly small cone, much like the T9 power. Insight is kind of a non-mechanic, something that kind of happens but not something you actually play around or with. I made the character for RP reasons, but would be disappointed with Psi Melee otherwise.

For a new Brute, I always recommend Dark melee. It's got a lot of utility, there are some nice powers available early, and Negative Energy damage isn't bad at endgame. WM/EA is STRONG and PRETTY, though.

Out of curiosity, how much would going Bio Armor as a secondary for that extra Toxic damage help? I kind of want to give Psi a solid try, since I did most of the melee sets to death on Live. And before anyone says "just try it," most of the issues with Psi resist are past level 40.

Can't comment on Homecoming, but I had three AR characters on Live back in the day (Blaster, Corr, and later Defender when they added that option). It's not a fun powerset on a support. First, the redraw and generally slow attacks are a problem. Since your defender powers are going to lose your weapon, that's a lot of redraw. Also the slow attacks (as in long animations, not just cooldown) get in the way if you have an active defender powerset. You're also stuck with some mediocre powers: buckshot has tiny range compared to the rest of the set, the napalm is kind of odd and useless if you don't have a hold to go with it, and Snipe is basically trash. Your only true ranged AoE (as opposed to a cone) is M80, which has knockback, and is thus somewhat suspect. On a Corruptor, napalm is mildly useful since it checks Scourge the same way a rain attack would, but Defenders don't get that. Almost all your damage is lethal, which is highly resisted. On a blaster, you can power through this with raw damage, but on a defender, you might as well just do Sonic or Psi which basically ignore that problem. It's the same reason playing a Mercenaries MM is painful: you start with roughly the same damage numbers as the other powersets, but rapidly run into far, far higher resistances than those other powersets. One of the advantages of Defender is that it gets Big Numbers on debuff effects. Of which AR has none, really. Dark Blast or Sonic Blast benefit from this the most, but AR basically not at all.

New to Homecoming, and unsure how tankers here differ from the old game. I see some references to Bruising and Gauntlet, but am not entirely sure from reading the power descriptions in game what the difference is. I know I want to play a tanky dude with Bio armor, because it's something I haven't used, but am wondering what my tradeoffs for the classic Tanker vs Brute are. I know the Brute angry bar mechanic is still here, but am unsure what Tankers have going on aside from higher base numbers on defense powers. Also new to both Staff and TW, and am seeing a lot of gushing praise for TW and very little said about Staff other than that it seems to be the Mercenary equivalent for a melee set: not bad, per se, but still worse than everything else. What is Staff's "thing," so to speak?