Simply don't get hit by Spazmatism. In his first phase he's just there. He just hangs at the side launching projectiles at you. Actually, his contact damage is lower than his Cursed Flame damage in the first phase. In the 2nd phase he's especially to avoid with Gelatinous Pillion, and the damage of his flamethrower is significantly lower than his contact damage.
Unoptimal? Having by far the highest survivability while still dealing decent DPS is anything but "unoptimal". Melee/Summon Tank Hybrid can also do the "Run in a straight line while shooting at the boss" thing with Shadowflame Knife and Blade Staff. The difference is that Tank is far less vulnerable to random mobs that may spawn during the fight, and doesn't have to worry about Retinazer's laser spam at all unlike "offensive" characters. When playing normally, you focus on how to survive the fight in the first place and try to win it. With Melee/Summon hybrid, you consider if you want to play greedy to win an otherwise nearly-unlosable fight faster.
The point I was making is that, by “simply not touching Spazmatism”, you miss out on the big spicy core of the facetank: Fetid Baghnakhs and Titanium Armor. You then rely on your blades and probably the whip, you end up treating the boss like you would in a Summoner bossfight - except compared to a Summoner build, you have a severe deficit in minion count, damage bonuses, and whatever you got from Obsidian Armor in tradeoff for your current survival power. This is what I meant by it being unoptimal and inefficient to not get hit by Spazmatism - at that point, you could just also make a summoner build for cheaper and do the same thing with offense instead of defense. As for bringing another weapon along, there’s two things with that: 1) a get-go build with the same weapons will again just be an example of the offense to defense trade-off, and 2) that’s another thing you have to get.
The other thing is, that while on the run, yes you have insane survivability, but what all are you missing out on? Several minion slots, a significant amount of damage, dash - unless you further go out of your way as well as take a bit from your ultratank to use any of these. There’s a certain loss to this: yeah, you’re taking limited damage from Retinazer or foreign mobs during the fight, but an offensive build can spec into mobility to avoid Retinazer altogether and/or race Retinazer down with DPS before they can do substantial DPS, and a defensive but not facetank build finds the middle ground.
Lastly, playing greedy to win the fight faster is yet another aspect of skill and strategic planning that this build involves. Do you want to play the fight like a common build, but just with an insane amount of defense instead of an insane amount of offense, or do you want to actually take advantage of the core of the build and put yourself in combatial risk to bite into DPS? Strategic thinking and planning mid combat, then executive skill to take the greed and risk dying to shred out a chunk of the boss’s HP.
It takes 5 minutes to craft rails and place them with Builder potion. I forgot about Star Veil but the ingredients for it come at the same time as you're grinding for Titan Glove anyway. If you turn your Underground Crimson into a dedicated area for farming/grinding, it can probably be a very good Mimic farm as well. So after you get Titanium Armor, you can essentially get Fetid, Flesh Knuckles, Titan Glove, Star Cloak, Cross Necklace and Ichor Flasks all in the same biome, doing the same thing. Then what's left is cheesing Queen Slime with a sky rail that will take 5 minutes to build.
The way you described how to set up the "min max" build sounds simple honestly. And really though, Leaf wings sucks. Tied for worst Hardmode wings alongside Angel/Demon wings, and over half a platinum coin to buy it isn't exactly cheap. Fairy/Frozen/Harpy wings are all noticeably better. Summoner needs to fight RNG for Sanguine Staff or grind Queen Slime for Blade Staff, and still need to grind Wall of Flesh if Firecracker hasn't already dropped (and Summoner Emblem too probably if using Sanguine.) Mage needs to grind to obtain any of its viable weapons except maybe Meteor Staff, but last time I used Meteor Staff its high mana cost made it meh for me to use. Same thing for Ranger, Dart Pistol/Rifle, Daedalus and Onyx Blaster won't be handed to you for free. The way you're describing these "get-go" builds make them look weak and undergeared, and wouldn't really be able to beat Mech bosses unless on the hand of a really skilled player that is probably trying to rush through the game in the first place.
Morning Star needs some grinding in the Hardmode dungeon to obtain. Dark Harvest needs grinding the Pumpkin Moon to get it. Kaleidoscope is a drop from Empress of Light, one of the harder if not hardest bosses in the game. They don't necessarily come "automatically" like Durendal and Hallowed Armor do. Terra Blade needs a lot of crafting and you need to do Solar Eclipse and beat a miniboss for it, that's not really some "Automatic" or "go on about your day" activity either. Sharks are pretty annoying to farm by the way because from my experience they are uncommon. All of these "small" tasks you're describing adds up, when with Titanium facetank you need to do far less "updating" through Hardmode.
Leaf Wings and palladium sucking was the point. For a significantly smaller price than reforging all your accessories, you can buy low tier wings. You can get palladium or either tier 2 ore instead of Titanium. You can get mid tier weapons that drop from easy targets. And you’re set for the mechs. It might not be a fast fight, but if you’re skilled at avoiding hits, you’ll win.
Onto a separate note. Do other classes really take the same anount of setup? Mage can make Crystal Storm, all three materials (Crystal Shards, Soul of Light, Wizard for spell tomes) can be obtained from the same environment, with a lower time than farming Biome Mimics. You don’t even need an anvil for these. And believe me, this weapon is plenty for the Mechs. Melee’s Shadowflame Knives or Drippler Crippler only take a bit more time to get than a biome mimic drop, and furthermore they only need one out of three of the normal mimic drops - this is probably the longest winded of the four. Ranger’s best Dart Guns come from the *same place* as your Fetid Baghnakhs, and Onyx Blaster actually requires a simpler set of materials. Summoner needs to beat Queen Slime, but so does your facetank build, and Summoner’s preemptive gear before that - Spider and Firecracker, especially Spider - should really be easier to get than full Titanium and Fetid Baghs. Then, in exchange for three Mimic drops, you can kill Wall of Flesh a few times for your class emblem and make an easy set of wings like Fairy.
Compared to this, this build *specifically* needs Titanium Armor (sucks for you if your world got Adamantite, now go fish), Fetid Baghnakhs, a few Queen Slime kills, several basic mimic drops. You could also get most of these from the same place: but then you have to set up a farm and wait as you slowly collect each piece in the set. I get what you mean with this sounding simple, but I don’t agree with it being more swift than another build which can liferally get full prep from similar or easier situations.
Plus, are you really going to just run Fetid Baghs until Cultist? I mean, you *can* if you know what you’re doing, but you also *can* use Sanguine and Blade, or Megashark until Cultist if you know what you’re doing as well. But the goal of this build is to have absolutely absurd DPS at the same time as high survivability, not somewhat above average DPS for somewhat above average survivability. Really, along the way, you would likely want Terra Blade, Dark Harvest, maybe Vampire Knives, or Frozen Shield. Maybe it’s less upgrading, but it’s still upgrading. Make your life a hell of a lot easier during Pillars.
No, not really. Take Ranger for example. Low skill floor because it's as simple as picking a weapon and clicking to shoot a damaging projectile. The skill ceiling come from the ability to aim at the boss consistently while dodging at the same time, and the possibility of dropping Chlorophyte bullets in favor of higher-damage bullets if you think you can adapt your aim. Meanwhile Summoner has a moderate skill floor and a relatively very high skill ceilling. Nearly all minions behave very differently from each other, and different minions synergize better or worse with different whips. The skill ceilling is made very high with Whip stacking. In theory, stacking 3-5 whips depending on progression & minion is the way to absolutely maximize DPS to the limit, and even someone like me only uses 2-3 whips at the same time.
But Titanium Facetank? There's an existing skill floor because it's a "min-max" build that uses several specific options. But once you get there and set up the build, the skill ceilling is already hit basically. You just hug the enemy and throw a whip out time to time for a damage boost (don't even have to do it while moving let alone dodging). Setting up for Titanium Facetank is not "hard to master" or "impractical" in the sense of inputs and skills in fights. Only thing is that it might be slightly tedious if you didn't properly plan ahead and isn't efficient at resource gathering. The only challenge is that it might take a bit more time to set up/grind for than regular builds. If anything, the only thing that is "impractical" is having an average or even beginner player fighting mech bosses while undergeared (Palladium armor with Leaf Wings, and no Ranger Emblem in the case of ranged weapons). That's not "efficient". You overestimate how much effort it takes to setup Titanium facetank when in reality as I said, it only takes a bit more time to setup while very easily lasting until pillars, potentially completely skipping building Plantera arena as well.
A build where you flee like an idiot along a pre-set path with a high ranged gun is significantly easier to execute than a titanium facetank build. The skill floor is so low, and yet it still lets you beat bosses with minimal difficulty. It takes no skill to sit in a box and use Daedalus Stormbow to cheese Destroyer, other than the skill to get the Daedalus Stormbow to begin with. Then you get to the floor ceiling. Mastering avoiding boss attacks has the same merit as mastering positioning for a facetank build, and you can basically learn to never get hit, ever. This same principle can extend to all four classes in a common build: master the boss’s attacks, master not getting hit.
While in Titanium, it takes a lot more to reach said skill floor/ceiling. A mastery of game mechanics that you needed to come up with this to begin with - whereas, any old idiot can figure out to run from the boss while shooting. An ability to glue yourself to the boss, at the same time having the strategic planning and basic dodging ability to not glue yourself to the bossnat the wrong time. A sense of timing and rhythm that allows you to abuse whips.
I really disagree with the statement that this build is not hard to master, an easy conclusion for the person who created the logistics of the strategy and who also already has the mastery of whip stacking and game mechanics. Everything I listed in the previous paragraph is something that takes skill, whether it’s a simple application like knowing when not to dive into Spazmatism, or a high end application like mastering whip+fetid stacking. Furthermore, while this goal point packs insane power, even you yourself admitted limitations of this insane power: the inability to handle certain fights like Duke Fishron and Empress, or the need to go back and gear up before fighting Moon Lord.
Meanwhile, this “broad and efficient” idea I was talking about has a lower need of player ability, and a wider scope of what it can handle (specifically: everything) at the loss of raw, extreme damage output. Palladium and leaf wings was a very low end example of this, that I was really using to force the point that, with ability, even shoddy, five second setups can deal with bosses. That was a separate point.
Imagine you take time to set up a fully capable “broad and efficient” character. (More time having efficiency sounds counterintuitive, but efficiency has several meanings: specifically, less micromanaging of bossrs and weapons, as well as being similar to the principle of being broad). You have the ability to, with moderate effort, deal with pretty much everything in the game; have an upgrade tree that lasts the whole game including Moon Lord; have an option, in the late game, to just crush everything coming up by killing Duke or Empress.
I already established that you get all this for the tradeoff of the completely insane DPS of a facetank build. And maybe this doesn’t handle Plantera or Golem as well as the facetank build, but it does handle Moon Lord better and has more of an incentive to bite into side events. Both general strategies have their strengths, and a preference to having such high DPS that you simply race down each boss is exactly that: a preference. This is why, all this time, I’ve refused to call any one skill set or any one total build better than the other.