Psionic healers?

[EisenKreutzer]

The Vitalist is the dedicated healer class among the DSP psionic classes, but there are alternatives. The Tactician has access to the Battlefield Medic archetype, and the Egoist psion also has some healing powers available. I'm sure there are others as well that I'm missing.

How do they compare to one another in terms of healing potential?

As a side note, how do the psionic classes compare to the traditional divine caster alternatives?

[Ssalarn]

Vitalist is pretty much the top of the line healer. From the divine classes, only the Life Oracle can match his potential for keeping a party on their feet.

The Tactician and Egoist options are closer to a Hospitaler Paladin - effective enough in their own way, but lacking the sheer effecitveness and versatility of the 9 level divine healers or the Vitalist.

[Novawurmson]

Hey again :D

In terms of raw healing, the Vitalist wins - pretty much period. The vitalist also has an arcanist-like ability to switch out powers known every day and then also use them "spontaneously" all casters do. However, there are a few real advantages of the Battle Medic Tactician compared to the Vitalist, especially at levels 6+:

-Better power list. The vitalist and tactician power lists are fairly even - both have their advantages as disadvantages - but the battle medic adds all Healing subdiscipline to his list. It's kind of like trying to decide between a wizard and a druid for a fire-themed mage, but the druid gets all [fire] wizard spells added to his spell list - it just tips the balance a lot if that's what you're going for.

-More powers known. The vitalist has 1 more power known at level 1, even at 2-3, and then remains behind the tactician, culminating at 11 powers known for the vitalist (i.e. 2 above the wilder) at level 20 vs. 20 for the tactician.

-Cushion the Blow line for free. Yeah, you can spend the feats for them as a vitalist, but the tactician gets them a level early (as you don't get a feat at level 6), and, again, free. The vitalist also is going to need to choose between Cushion the Blow and Fast Aid (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/feats/fast-aid-psionic) for their level 7 feat, while the battle medic gets it for free and could pick up, say, Expanded Knowledge (Metamorphosis).

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Back Into the Fray

A battle medic of 6th level has learned to channel additional healing energy when it is most needed. When manifesting a power of the Healing subdiscipline on a member of his collective, and the target is below 50% of its total hit points, the battle medic can expend his psionic focus to treat that power as if affected by the Empower Power feat

With Psionic Meditation, you can standard action to manifest a healing power, expend focus to empower it for free, and move action regain psionic focus, ready to do it again the next round. Synchronizes with Cushion the Blow, as Cushion the Blow helps prevent an ally from being 100-0'ed, meaning your allies will actually spend some time between 50% and 0% where you can take advantage of it.

-The Collective Defenses strategy:


Collective Defenses:The tactician is able to harness the sensory information available through his collective to bolster the defenses of members of his collective. For a number of rounds equal to the tactician's Charisma modifier (minimum 1), the tactician and all members of his collective within line of sight of the tactician gain an insight bonus to Armor Class equal to the tactician's Intelligence modifier (minimum 1).

It's almost trivial to have a 20-22 in Intelligence by level 7 (when you get your first strategy), and a +5-+6 to AC for your whole collective as a swift action is pretty intense, especially when you realize it stacks with things like like battlesense.

-Echo Effect. Copy and redistribute all you and your allies' buffs, including personal buffs. Hard to explain how powerful this really is when used properly.

[Tulya]

Wrote a post earlier, but forgot about some features like the Mender's Expertise, so the math was wrong. Instead of making more potential errors, I'll leave it to general comparison.

The Wilder is a competitive choice in the healer's role.
At the lowest levels, Wild Surge makes them the likely winner in pp efficiency and spike healing capacity. The tradeoffs are that you can only heal in touch range with Shared Power, you can only heal allies every other round, and you need to chose either Healing Surge or be a Blue to gain both Natural Healing and the Shared Power feat.
In the early to mid game, you're pretty much going to have to abandon in-combat healing. You have no real class features that will support it. However, out-of-combat healing efficiency remains up there with Wild Surge - especially once you get a second psionic focus, so you can use Shared Power when manifesting a power with Wild Surge every 10 minutes. Fortunately, the Psion/Wilder list gives you plenty of other useful options for combat.
At 9th level with a +1 Surge Crystal, you're the first manifester with access to fully augmented Psychic Reformation. At 11th level with a +2 Surge Crystal, you can manifest fully augmented reformations every 10 minutes off of Wild Surge. This opens up access to all manner of situational and utility powers.
At 15th level, you gain access to Heal Injuries, and finally have a useful in-combat healing option. A fully augmented and surged Heal Injuries is still dwarfed by spirit of many heal redirection shenanigans, but it's at this point where overhealing becomes a serious concern. Vitalists can pull out 500+ HP heals at superb efficiency per pp, but... it's highly unlikely they'll encounter situations where they actually need so much healing at once.

Throw all of this out the door if a game allows redirection of Fast Healing from Astral Constructs, though. Then one level of Vitalist and a bunch of utility constructs is all you need to fill the healer role.