Bringing up astral construct though, these are both discipline specific powers.
They are both decently strong, useful over all levels, and can both do an incredible amount of damage.
Astral construct doesnt allow much for saves
But still, this is neither here nor there.
In my experience as levels increase caster types rely less and less on direct damage dealing spells. It is almost always better to simply buff someone or push out the save or dies or simply save the slots for utility. Save dc's tend to ramp up pretty quickly, and special abilities that drown out energy damage pick up very fast.
Even then, at the levels where the damage and dc's actually start becoming truely impressive (not overpowering, just impressive) a nice little heal spell here and there completely undoes it, possibly even nearly 4 times over, for a spell effectively 4.5 levels lower!
So healing isnt really the problem.
The area of effect though is tiny, spells/powers of the same level have a much larger area of effect, and some even do more damage. So, that isnt the issue.
The only benefit this power has is its bonus to its dc, and while that bonus is nice the character had to pay for it. The easy one is by either by being a kineticist or through a feat.
Looking at it from the feat perspective though, it is effectively paying a feat to possibly gain extra dc for a single power. Pretty specialized stuff there.
Like I said though, comparing it with other spells that already exist (which seems to be what people like) are pretty much even.
So, when it comes down to looking pretty even 'as is' (well, without the ability to target attended objects) then why should it be reduced?