I think I belong to the righ corner of the boxing ring where all the tablet devotees are standing :-)

In my humble opinion I must say that I never would stand working in photoshop without using a tablet (a wacom in my case). In other programs like CC3 I rarely use the tablet, it works just as well with the mouse, and sometimes better I think. All maps I've done here on the forum are made with a tablet and are drawn in PS, nothing is scanned. What you prefer is very much up to your self and what working method you like. But the tablet will open up new possibilities for you in completing things in PS that will be very hard to do without a tablet.

The learning curve is quite light I would say in learning to use a tablet. After some practice it works really nice.