I'm surprised that wilder is getting so many votes.
If you look carefully (and with a bit flexibility) you would see that it isn't nearly that bad.
First you need to know the Mind's eye variants. Educated wilder takes away volatile mind and replaces it with a free EPK feat. Your powers known just went from 11 to 15 and they can be of any list. This is the single best fix that WoTC made for wilder. The other mantled variant gives up the elude touch class feature for a mantle, elude touch is actually a good class feature but getting key powers earlier and without burning a feat to get them might be worthwhile.
Wilder has 3/4 BAB progression, same as psychic warrior. Getting heavy armor proficiency isn't that hard if you dip into psiwarrior or fighter. Don't compare wilder to a psion, they were not made to fill the same roles. 3/4 BAB and light armor makes wilder capable of fighting in the front lines, surging euphoria should be a strong hint that wilders should be fighting. Wilders can be built in a number of different ways to do many different things, but they have to commit.
Here's where your DM will have to have a somewhat open mind: overchannel= wild surge It isn't that much of a stretch. They do the same thing, they cannot be used at the same time, both have side effects, either or is needed to qualify for anarchic initiate. So by this logic, a wilder can qualify for the talented feat.
What should talented do for wild surge? Well we know that it makes overchanneling powers of 3rd level or less deal no damage, hence takes away the side effect of overchannel. So it should take away the side effect of wild surge as well.
This might sound powerful, but in fact it is not. It simply makes wilder worth leveling to 20. Psychic ennervation is a chance to lose PSP and one round as opposed to overchannel which is a guarantee to take damage. Expending focus just to prevent something that might happen offsets the +ML that wild surge provides. Even with +6 ML there is still a 60% chance nothing will happen without talented.
Even without these leaps of faith rulings on talented, variant wilders are still very decent when you consider everything they do has +2ML on it. This is a class that looks bad on paper but shines in a good players hands. Try it out and I don't think you will want to fix it.
I'm considering writing a Wilder handbook to show just how to overcome the precieved weaknesses of wilders.