While I owned the books, it wasn't until 3rd edition D&D that I actually began playing. Nonetheless, I owned several books and one of my favorites was the Psionics Handbook. It's the only version of the psionicist that I have seen that actually felt like it's own thing: PSPs instead of spell slots. Six disciplines instead of Eight schools of magic. Power checks. The contact subsystem. Attack and defense modes. Some very strange powers...But I have never actually seen the psionicist in play. The books will tell you that they are no better or worse than any other class but putting that conceit aside for a moment, what were the psionicists actually like in play? Did they outshine other classes? Were they a poor man's wizard? did anyone actually bother with contact powers? Did power checks add or subtract from the experience?
Terrible. AD&D 2nd Edition didn't make balance a key concern. It's pretty hard to do that when you have die-rolled stats. But 2e did have some balancing tools. For instance, wizards had very few spells at 1st-level, but at the same time those spells (eg Sleep) were really strong, because everything you were likely to face had terrible saves. As you got more spells, enemies got stronger saves so you needed to cast more spells. It wasn't really balanced, but you could see where the game went with that.
Psionicists were the opposite. Your powers were less likely to succeed than spells at low levels, but because few allowed saving throws, enemies never got stronger against them... and you were getting more PSPs with levels. You could not really challenge a psionicist by using a more powerful creature, such as a dragon. Using lots of creatures worked really well though, again, the opposite of a wizard, who would rather Fireball or Sleep a bunch of weak kobolds than risk seeing a spell sizzle against a powerful dragon. (I had a psionicist that could daze any creature not immune to psionics 60% of the time. Didn't work so well against kobolds. Psionicists had terrible AoE powers. Worked ridiculously effectively against dragons.)
Even worse was Disintegrate. I understand you would only have enough PSPs to use it once at 3rd-level (or at 1st-level, if you rolled the right wild talent, and I'm not entirely sure if that was legal...) but you shouldn't be able to instantly kill a far more powerful opponent at 1st-level. The risk of accidentally Disintegrating yourself did not frighten those with a decent knowledge of statistics. You had a 5% chance of having to make your easiest saving throw with a +4 bonus to it. (Well I recall that save being the easiest.) Unlike Id Insinuation (the "dazing" power I used a lot) you only needed to hit with it once. There's a reason the equivalent spell couldn't be taken until you had reached 12th-level or so.
Psionics was often too complicated. This was especially the case with Telepathy and even worse with psionic combat. You had to establish contact, or use attack modes to force contact, and contact had various modifiers depending on how different the target creature was from you. The power often cost more PSPs against more powerful creatures and often gave them a saving throw too. Double jeopardy, triple jeopardy? And then there powers that made the creature think it had lost 80% of its hit points. A simpler power like Ballistic Attack requires a power score roll and then an attack roll.
I'm sure there's a lot of powers that weren't overpowered, but no one knew how to use or counter them.
There were a lot of really weak powers in there. Animated Objects (or something similar), allowed you to animate an object (gasp!) that attacked "as a club" with THAC0 20, rather than your own. No stat mods either. After you succeeded at a power score roll, of course. That's such terrible design, I have no idea what it was doing in a gamebook. Or take Project Force, from a flavor perspective a really fun power. It did damage of 1d6 + target AC (or something similar), so as you faced more powerful creatures, it became weaker. I wonder what the playtesting feedback on that power said.
Psionicist power selection was too chance-based. Animal Affinity was one of those crazy powers that could give you something overpowered or something underpowered. It's been so long since I've played 2e I don't recall how powers were selected. I think you had to roll to start and then pick them, and while I thought that was terrible, I think wizards having to roll for their initial spells was also terrible.
Rolling an expensive power simply meant you got more PSPs to start. That's a bit like rolling your caster level when playing a wizard, when everyone else has to start at 1st-level. Even if you got nothing but the spells, a 1st-level wizard with the ability to cast Fireball is blatantly more powerful than a 1st-level wizard who can only cast Burning Hands.
It was fun though. It had great flavor. I loved the Detonate power! And Wormhole! I never got to use Dream Travel but think that would be fantastic (and ridiculously hard on the DM). I wish more 2nd Ed powers got converted to 3rd and 4th edition... just in a way that was sane and balanced.
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