Kichwas
Half-breed, still living despite WotC racism
On that Alchemist madness I put at the tail end of my last post. At level 4 there is an alchemist feat called Healing Bomb. It's very potent. With that alone you will "Almost" match a cleric. The problem is it consumes 'infused reagents' very fast. Its through Quick Alchemy meaning every time you do it you burn up one infused reagent. That said. If a sniper healer is too risky for you due to accuracy - and a familiar healer (there's actually an Alchemist Familiar Feat for that) too risky - if you're willing to run around in melee you already are the best in-combat healer in the game. It's just no one expects it.
For out of combat healing: the issue that spark'd the OP's post I gather... your most important feat ever will be 'Assurance' - that's the feat in PF2E that lets you take 10 on a skill check. Once you have that you can plan out your heals reliably. Then you want Rapid Recovery so the time taken is 10 minutes. The same 10 minutes the casters spend on refocus and someone else uses to search the area the battle happened in.
Once you're planning them out - you can often heal up in 1-2 10 minute breaks. If you're GM isn't allowing you to take 10 minutes between each action scene that's a problem in and of itself of pacing. There aren't too many situations where people don't get a breather. There IS an adventure path put out from Paizo that does just this though - 10 back to back combat encounters with no breaks between them. Most people edit that module (Agents of Edgewatch's first book) because they do that at level 1 and it's near unplayable (I've heard it was being written while PF2E was still in development, so it was 'tuned' according to PF1E guidelines and this got past the editors / final review. That kind of pacing is generally seen as unacceptable in PF2E.) My current group has one player who joined an Agents of Edgewatch game right as they were starting book 2 (of 6), and says the rest of the module was properly scaled / paced to PF2E.
In-combat healing is not needed as much in more recent adventures and if a GM is scaling encounters properly according to the system in the rulebook. But if you run the earlier adventures and adventure packs you might need 5 clerics for any given party of 4 adventurers... Especially if it's Plaguestone - which is a broken adventure in terms of encounter scaling.
In general a fight should last 3-4 rounds, and your in combat healing will likely be needed once, maybe twice. If it starts coming up more on a regular basis the encounters are over-tuned.
For out of combat healing: the issue that spark'd the OP's post I gather... your most important feat ever will be 'Assurance' - that's the feat in PF2E that lets you take 10 on a skill check. Once you have that you can plan out your heals reliably. Then you want Rapid Recovery so the time taken is 10 minutes. The same 10 minutes the casters spend on refocus and someone else uses to search the area the battle happened in.
Once you're planning them out - you can often heal up in 1-2 10 minute breaks. If you're GM isn't allowing you to take 10 minutes between each action scene that's a problem in and of itself of pacing. There aren't too many situations where people don't get a breather. There IS an adventure path put out from Paizo that does just this though - 10 back to back combat encounters with no breaks between them. Most people edit that module (Agents of Edgewatch's first book) because they do that at level 1 and it's near unplayable (I've heard it was being written while PF2E was still in development, so it was 'tuned' according to PF1E guidelines and this got past the editors / final review. That kind of pacing is generally seen as unacceptable in PF2E.) My current group has one player who joined an Agents of Edgewatch game right as they were starting book 2 (of 6), and says the rest of the module was properly scaled / paced to PF2E.
In-combat healing is not needed as much in more recent adventures and if a GM is scaling encounters properly according to the system in the rulebook. But if you run the earlier adventures and adventure packs you might need 5 clerics for any given party of 4 adventurers... Especially if it's Plaguestone - which is a broken adventure in terms of encounter scaling.
In general a fight should last 3-4 rounds, and your in combat healing will likely be needed once, maybe twice. If it starts coming up more on a regular basis the encounters are over-tuned.
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