what is the most efficient way to play a Chirurgeon Alchemist?

[QuantumBall]

do i just prepare a lot of elixirs and give to people in the party before the fight?

[SuperBidi]

Unless your party members have free hands (Monks, Animal Barbarian and the like) they'll never use your Elixirs.
You just need to give them yourself, you can give an Elixir to an adjacent ally.
Another solution is to get a Familiar with Manual Dexterity, so it can give it to your allies (2 actions to command it, one to move on the ally square, one to give the Elixir, it's pretty efficient).

[Exocist]

Pick Bomber or Toxicologist, seriously Chirurgeon does very little comparatively. If you want to be a main healer, I’d suggest bomber, because their perpetual bombs allow them to spend 0 reagents per day on bombs while still having a decent damage option (with the splash enhancer feats and sticky bomb/debilitating bomb). That leaves the rest of your reagents for Elixirs.

I would recommend a few Elixirs of life, healing bomb is useful because they’re kind of awful action economy wise otherwise, but even with healing bomb they’re still not that great. I recommend a familiar - independent and valet to let you draw an item for free every turn, or stick the familiar on the frontline with the Elixirs to let them draw an elixir of life for free every turn. Or just have the familiar alternate between drawing and feeding.

You want to give out mistform Elixirs, poisons and a relevant Mutagen (quicksilver or energy) otherwise.

[shroudb]

Chirurgeon needs level 13, before that he's just bad. But if you want to play him then this would be my advice:

healing bomb is a trap unless you are starting (or retraining to it) at high level, until 7th level you'll only be healing 1d6 per 1 full ingredient which is... not even a cantrip worth of healing.

as a chirurgeon you wont be using healing elixirs until level 5 either way, because 1d6 healing at levels 1-4 is extremely low especially for the actions required.

Manual dexterity and indipendent is kinda wonky, because the familiar needs another action to draw the elixir in addition to the two actions to move and deliver, and then needs the next round to be commanded back into your space and etc. Imo it's better to go with Valet and Indipendent so that it can draw you 1 elixir ech round for free, and then use your own actions to deliver it.

How i would play chirurgeon:

Forget about healing elixirs until level 5. You can probably have like 1-2 ingredient worth of them JUST to stabilise someone (although it's extremely risky to actually bring them back to life with like 3 hp on average) but it's worth it if it's the actual party healer.

At those levels just grab drakeheart and a relevelant archetype, both Blessed and Medic will do much more for healing compared to a chirurgeon until level 5. The reason for Drakeheart+melee is so that you need to spend as few actions as possible, so you want to sit next to the other melees to feed them potions/battle medicine/lay on hands without moving.

At level 6 moderate mistform becomes available as well for damage mitigration, both for you and your allies. (lesser mistform is terrible so i wouldn't waste resources on that)

You can potentially go for Medic at 2, Visitation + treat condition at 4, and then at 6 and 8 go for bard+inspire courage and simply tank both dex and str (14 and 10 respectively and no eed to raise them afterwards), you wont be attacking, but you wont be losing much by not attacking. Just go for shield+empty hand. 2 actions dedicated to healing someone (move to him+give potion or visitation and etc) and 1 action for Inspire. If you have an action leftover (you didn't have to move as an example or you used visitation) just raise your shield.

[SuperBidi]

Reading the other's messages, there's one point I want to add:
In my opinion, there's no difference between a Chirurgeon, a Bomber, a Mutagenist and a Toxicologist. The Research Fields add very few features. An Alchemist is one that uses all its tools.
So if you want to play a healer then don't play a Chirurgeon Alchemist. Play a Cleric.
Now, you can play a Chirurgeon Alchemist and be quite useful if you balance your uses of the Alchemist's features.

As a side note, Alchemist lacks an at-will action in combat. Getting Perpetual Bombs solve that issue, but way too late in my opinion. At level 2, you can grab an Animal Companion, a bow, a cantrip, etc... And it's my advice. Get something you can use every round in combat so you won't feel useless once you get out of reagents.

[SuperBidi]

I necro this discussion because I think I found a nice way to play a Chirurgeon, allowing it to have the same healing output than a Cleric.

You just need to be at least level 5, with these attributes:
Small size, Alchemical Familiar, Beastmaster Dedication, Mature Beastmaster Companion.
Ride your raptor. Every round, you have a free 50 ft of move. With Valet you get 2 Elixirs of Life for one action and you can then deliver them with your remaining actions. So you have the same healing output than a maxed 2-action Heal at 55 feet.

You can choose another Animal Companion as you see fit, as your GM may object on riding a raptor. Goblin wolf riders are a thing, so you will just lose a little bit of speed and heal at 45 feet.