I kite with battleships, its not their speed, but utility that allows them to kite. A mach, barg and typhoon can kite in the traditional sense as theyre all relatively fast and have utility.
A tempest is relatively slow, but has 2 heavy neuts. You can neut out most faster ships that come in to scram. You also have the grappler available to slow them on their approach.
If i choose to brawl, a grappler will slow a frigate down to below 100m/s in most cases. Lets say i have no AB and go with MWD. Base speed is 111m/s on a maelstrom. Frig web/scrams, so now im about 60m/s. Im done, like you said. With an AB, im at 300m/s, when webbed im about 120m/s. If i can keep the frigate below that number then i might be ok, however, using the grappler, the further away i am the faster that frig will become. I must move away to gain transversal, so id be stuck with a normal AB. If i increased speed of the AB with a rig, then my AB speed would be 420m/s. Reduce that by 60% from 1 web, now im at ~180m/s which gives much more wiggle room to pull range with OH grappler.
Yes its slow, but it would work. So that 120m/s difference is quite important under those conditions.