Human Kineticist: Wow she is underwhelming

Throw does prime, just very briefly. If you throw, then immediately follow it up with a lance, it will detonate - though your mileage may vary when off host.

As for the Human Kineticist, it is a L2P issue. The kit is very effective and fun(yes, even on gold). Ascension doesn't suck, it turns her into a monster if there are multiple mooks/unshielded on the battlefield with zero cd on pull+throw. If your team has annihilation field, she's another detonator spammer, more so than others. People like to discredit red bars, but swarms of mooks and dogs (ignoring blink fiend) are usually what ends up getting you killed.

Furthermore, in addition to the 50% DR Ascension provides, you also get full shields and iframes when you pop it: 




The kit itself is very difficult to play overall compared to something like a nade spam infiltrator. The play style is much different from other kits and if you try to play her like the others, you will get garbage results. Since you need to maximize your value from Ascension, you need to have excellent management of your shields. This means high map awareness, proper cover usage, excellent positioning, and mechanics adequate enough to consistently prime+pull+throw without getting shredded. All the while avoiding cowering in a corner with Ascension up.

As for that guide, it gives a good blueprint on how she should be played. I still think the PAW is one of the worst weapons in the game, but on her it, and the shadow for that matter, definitely work due to their priming capability (it outperforms the hurricane and equalizer at range for priming speed and accuracy). Essentially, you want to prime a mook quickly, and then use it as a primed bomb. This works because you ammo primes it and throw will not detonate the primed mook until it makes contact with a surface - ideally, another enemy. Also, as Schreiner has stated, if you throw your target into something primed, it will detonate as well. Grabbing canisters and throwing them at enemies will cause them to explode and will prime as well. 

You also need to build her with maximum barrier generation in mind (except recuperative barrier...you want unyielding instead). So biotic link, active barrier, biotic drain.

With all that being said, she can be frustrating to play at times. Namely when you have teammates who continue to kill sh*t that you have primed and pulled. I usually calmly try to inform them via voip to not do that. Other times I slip and inform them less friendly when they snipe my primed pull instead of one of the flak spamming zerkers or roflstomping Annointed. Also, Remnant are pretty annoying to play against with her, but still very effective.

Also, "COVER YOUR BRAINS"! Serious what in the f**k Bioware.