Highest DPS from the Party overall, not just 1 character.
That's not what DPS means. You might not be getting hit during Meteor if you throw a frost bomb, but that Frost Bomb has less DPS than a fire/lightning/poison bomb most of the time. And if you do intend to throw bombs during cooldowns, the time you spend drawing the runes for Meteor Storm will always reduce DPS, since you could just do fast click-attacks with bulk damage weapons and have time to throw more bombs. I do not see how your build results in the highest DPS when in my mind hitting with 4 heavy weapons then throwing bombs during weapon cooldown would result in significantly higher damage output than taking the time to line up Meteor Storm even once.Bombs are great "added" DPS because they have no cooldown, but the DPS of the group overall is what shines here. Meteor takes some time but when you have the ability to constantly "freeze" enemies with Frost Bombs and your Mage Farmer, casting time/difficulty becomes a non-issue.
But the question one has to ask here is: do I gain maximum survivability from 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4 alchemists? Every time you pick Alchemist instead of Barbarian, you lose HP, i.e. survivability. Everytime you pick it instead of Battlemage, you lose out on +10 protection. And another question one must ask is whether maximum survivability comes from picking Lizardman (+res), Insect (+prot) or Minotaur (+HP).Survivability comes from the benefits of dual Alchemists (tons of Skill Potions, Heals pots, Energy pots).
The only difference between 1 and 2 alchemists is time. Is it not a contradiction for you to act like grinding doesn't matter and then pick two alchemists? Just walk double the distance. And frankly I think even with zero alchemists you have enough HP and revival potions. The need for alchemists comes exclusively from the need for Energy Potions for a mage and more bombs. From a bomb perspective... yeah, if you're going to throw bombs every time your weapons go on cooldown, you're going to need an alchemist. I don't think a mage is optimal unless you specifically foresee needing invisibility or the like, but as you said the point here is to be strong enough for getting hit to not matter, so avoiding enemies with invisibility doesn't bring anything to the table.
That's not what "highest survivability" means. By your own admission you could in this specific example, increase survivability at the cost of attack. When your front party takes 1 dmg from melee attacks, that increases the survivability of your entire party. If you think further survivability is useless past the point where you can survive, why minmax for survivability in the first place? Why claim to have highest survivability, instead of merely high or high-enough survivability?The idea is at the "party level" not just 1 individual character. You could easily replace the Mino Alchemist with an Insect Alchemist to get Chitin Armor for added survivability at the cost of high attack (but I wouldn't do that since survivability comes from virtually endless heal potions via dual Alchemists). An Insect Battlemage does have higher survivability individually, but again that is just 1 character whereas the idea is to plan for the whole group. Running 2 Alchemists gives constant Heal Potions rendering the need for an Insect Battlemage a bit useless.
If you do not view grinding as having even slightly negative utility, even a microscopically small negative value, then it is logically inconsistent for you to play games in any other way than spending an infinity of time in zero-risk starting areas grinding until you are at max stats. You don't do that, because it would be insane.The game itself can be beaten with any group, even a solo Farmer. This isn't about beating the game but taking full advantage of the new features while working towards that "god mode" many gamers tend to love. As for grinding... it's an RPG.
My point is that spending several hours to get far more potions and levels than you'll ever need even to easily beat the game is in fact not a very attractive idea unless you somehow enjoy the aspect of grinding more than anything else in the game.
An admirable goal, and I'm arguing with you because I'm genuinely curious if you know something that I don't, because it seems to me that this is not the party set-up with maximum survivability.The key here is that while working towards "never getting hit" you also end up so strong that, "who cares if you get hit."
The minmaxers dream is maximum efficiency at minimal expenditure of resources and time. The optimum way of spending your time is to maximize the amount of utility you get per unit of resource (e.g. effort) and time (which is just another resource). Installing a game that I can enjoy for several tens of hours? Great fun.As far as your thoughts on effort, I never claimed that this was "effortless" so not sure why you made that a point. Everything requires effort, even buying and installing the game. I began by making it clear that to love "Grimrock is to love Walking." In your case you can avoid most effort altogether and beat the game even faster by downloading a Trainer Program if you like.
And look, the effort thing was a joke. At first I thought you were serious, and as a fellow minmaxer offered you my view on some DPS/survivability considerations. Then I re-read your post and thought for sure that with all the references to walking you had to be joking, you know, in the "here's how you can utterly break the game by spending an infinite amount of time walking" sense. But now you seem to be serious and even to some extent personally offended that my minmax calculations haven't brought me to the same endpoint as your own calculations. You know just as well as I do that there's a difference between a necessary 5-10 minute installation and 1-3 hours of optional grinding. Don't do this intellectually dishonest thing where you claim that I might as well just cheat to win if I'm not willing to do that.
This is honestly like the "I'm not racist, but..." line of reasoning. If you genuinely embraced "To each their own" as a life-philosophy, you would not get so mad at my way of analyzing party builds from an efficiency-time perspective as to insult me by painting this picture of me as subhuman scum that can't make an effort like all the good people.To each their own.
You know it's perfectly fine to claim that your build offers the best of the best in hyperbole and jest, it is not OK to get defensive when your calculations are off and I make mention of it.
It is perfectly fine to share and utilize and recommend a grind-heavy strategy, but when I call into question whether one could not achieve 99% of the same utility for 30% of the effort, you don't get to dismiss that by calling me lazy.