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Bomb Elixir and Combine Elixirs can only be used with quick alchemy and can't be both used on the same alchemical item as they both have the additive trait. A healing potion made with advanced alchemy can't be doubled or have the bomb attribute added to it.
So from what I read
Premade=7d6+18 and it would take and action to draw from a bag and then have to administered like a normal elixir.
Create and throw a double healing potion isn't possible. Must choose either throw for 60ph and 7 splash (doesn't affect target on a hit) +5 temp hp or 120 +5 temp hp that must be consumed like a normal elixir.
Battle Medicine work as stated. At 13 his crafting skill should be +13(level)+6(master)+5(Int)+2(Item)=+26 A greater Crafter's Eyepiece is a level 11 Item and should be available and I would think any alchemist would make crafting a priority for a skill especially a Chirurgeon.
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[Additive] is a trait and mechanic created for the Alchemist class. It got a lot more restrictive in the Remaster
Feats with the additive trait allow you to add special substances to alchemical consumables you create when you use Quick Alchemy to create a consumable (you can't use additives with quick vials). You can add only one additive to a single alchemical item, you can add an additive only once per round, and most additive abilities specify a subset of alchemical consumables you can add them to.
So no Additive item can be pre-made.
No Q-Alch item can benefit from more than one Additive feature.And no Alchemist can create 2 Additive-boosted items per turn.
Another note on Healing Bomb is that it was also nerfed in the Remaster. It used to heal fully on miss or better, now, you must hit your ally to get the full healing.
This is especially problematic considering that Elixirs of Life lack the item bonus to hit that normal bombs have. Last I checked, I had a 40% chance to hit my allies @ MAP 0 with those throws. Less than half. It's so badly performing in practice, that it is a "trap" of a feat choice, and combat action, in my opinion.
In general, Chirurgeons will prefer to use Dr.s Visitation from the Medic Archetype to both run to and heal allies for 1A, then use a touch-range elixir while already there.
While you do need to burst that player's bubble, here's a small compensation that they might not know of.
Because of how Combine Elixir adds the effects of a 2nd elixir to the first, this actually means an Alchemist can bypass the normal "only one mutagen/polymorph" limit. Thanks to Combine Elixir, the Chirurgeon can put a mutagen into a mutagen and explore whatever pairings they take a fancy of.
The Quicksilver + Stone Body can be a fun one; using a -spd tanking mutagen to balance the downsides of the +spd Quicksilver's fragility.
Another suggestion is to use the injection adjustment to deliver beneficial pre-made elixirs without the need to draw them. A modded spiked gauntlet with [injection] can offer one such dose before needing to be reloaded.
Chirurgeon's isn't that bad. Compare it with the Stabilize cantrip:
Stabilize takes 2 actions, 30' range and loses dying but stays at 0 hp.
Chirurgeon VV takes 2 actions, 20' range and heals the base damage number. It has the coagulant trait [1/10 min per target] but as you level you get the ability to ignore it when the target is 1/2 or lower hp.
IMO, it's not bad. Now Mutagenist and Toxicologist... You can make Toxicologist work if you can get a bow proficiency and never have to move [1 action on quick alchemy, 1 on applying poison and one on the Strike and that can turn pretty unsatisfying if you need actions for anything else. I can't even think of a situation where a Mutagenist VV is useful.
Also, don't forget to remind him about Soothing Tonic, A Soothing Tonic that is combined with either a Numbing Tonic or Juggernaut Mutagen can really stymie incoming pain.
Considering the cooldown applies until L11, it makes more sense to compare the Chir FV to a cantrip like Rousing Splash over Stabilize.
Rousing Splash grants 1d4 p R of tHP, is 60ft range, works on full HP targets, can be prebuffed, and it has the rider of helping to remove persistent acid/fire damage.
3d4 averages to 7.5, while 2d6 averages to 7. Level 5 and up, Rousing Splash overtakes.
And because Chirurgeons have recharging VVials for Soothing Tonics, even the out of combat healing is irrelevant in practice.
I have paid close attention across the 3 remaster Chirurgeons I have played, explicitly looking for a situation where it would be good action.
While the feature has been used for quick flavor to treat NPCs for 0 cost, the FV healing has not "made a difference" for the next situation/encounter a single time, ever.
The faster rate of out of combat healing does exist on paper, especially the 1/2 HP -> no cooldown rapid heal @ L11, but even with a GM who does carefully note the passage of time, the FV healing has never made a difference in my play experience.
I cannot recall a single event like our rest getting ambushed-interrupted with more HP restored due to the FV healing, etc.
I have used the FV healing in combat, and regretted it every time. Once, I thought I had a great opportunity when a mid-combat door slam cut us off from the foes, but instantly wished I had instead popped a Grease scroll to set up a hazard. Other PCs might have preferred to Ready a ranged attack, Recall Knowledge, etc, but the HP numbers being that low really does make just about anything else more appealing.
It's actually RaW confirmed, but hiding inside the Mutagenist Field Vial entry of all places.
... If you have more than one drawback due to Combine Elixirs or a similar ability, drinking the vial suppresses one drawback of your choice.
So even before Mutagenist gets their "two mutagens at once" ability at L13, they, and every other PC with Combine Elixirs, can double up.
Which also means that a Mutagenist can actually endure 4 mutagens at once, if both are Quick Alch short-term Combines.
To be honest though, mutagens are in general, kinda bad. The issue is that not only do their benefits need to justify their drawback effects, but they are directly competing against all other alchemical items. Pre-remaster, this was not exactly true, as the alch specialists would have a quantity advantage and create more of their specialty item.
Now that all alch items cost 1 VV / daily prep item, stacking more than two mutagen benefits is a "but why would you want to?" affair. Even mutagen flavored PCs kinda tend to be satisfied with Bestial + Juggernaut, as they both gain real perks from the Mutant Physique feat.
Some of the mutagens are genuinely important tools to remember, but I'd still say mutagens are best as a reactive response tool instead of proactive buffing one.
As an example, Energy Mutagen is amazing at providing elemental energy resistance in response to seeing a foe deal energy damage, but you'll never want to pre-commit to one energy type. Gaining a weakness to all the others can genuinely be a lethal mistake if you pick wrong. (but the drawbacks don't scale! So that danger does becomes less as the levels go up)
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I'm guessing that he is not reading the Additive trait text itself.
Combine Elixir has the wording he mentioned, but the Additive trait it carries includes more restrictions.In specific, "Feats with the additive trait allow you to add special substances to alchemical consumables you create when you use Quick Alchemy to create a consumable..."
The old version didn't have that "Quick Alch only" restriction, it was added in the remaster.
He is also missing the "once per turn" limitation, which is also inside the Additive text.
He may also want to consider the Quick Bomber class feat, as that allows an Alchemist to both create and throw a bomb inside a single action. And Healing Bomb would count as a bomb in that case. Quick Bomber is arguably the most powerful feat in the Alchemist class, especially when paired with the Double Brew class feature at L9.
That combination allows one to add a bonus 0A bomb throw any time one wants to use Quick Alch to make a single other item.
If the 40% starting H-Bomb accuracy is correct, then throwing an H-Bomb @ MAP -5 would have a 15% chance to land the healing...
It's uh, "a very bad feat" after the remaster nerf.
My friend sent me the following. Are his statements true?
"When using advance alchemy, my daily prep, I don't see why I cannot include combine elixirs and advanced alchemy to make a double elixir of life with just one additive property. It just says that it has to be one I could create with Quick Alchemy not that it is Quick Alchemy.
Combine Elixirs has the Additive Trait. Additive says this:
Feats with the additive trait allow you to add special substances to alchemical consumables you create when you use Quick Alchemy to create a consumable (you can't use additives with quick vials). You can add only one additive to a single alchemical item, you can add an additive only once per round, and most additive abilities specify a subset of alchemical consumables you can add them to.
That makes clear that the item MUST be created with Quick Alchemy to qualify for Combine Elixirs, as the feat can only be used as part of Quick Alchemy. As soon as your player starts talking about Advanced Alchemy, Combine Elixirs is off the table.
I agree I can't make a double healing bomb but I could create 2 healing bombs at the same time (using 2 vials) and could throw both in one round. 1 action for quick alchemy, 1 action to throw the first, and 1 action to throw the second with map."
This sounds like it should work. MAP is really bad on Healing Bomb given the miss chance, though. For max healing, a better option is using Doctors Visitation (from Medic Archetype which a Ciurgeon can access with Crafting instead of Medicine) can get you into melee range and Battle Medicine, and you can then feed them elixirs with no miss chance.
That said: the GM can choose to adopt the "Gliminal" house rule which says that a player that wants to be hit by an effect can choose to allow the attacker to get one degree of success better on the outcome (or one degree worse for saves). Effectively the player doesn't try to dodge it so it's easier to hit them. This changes a miss into a hit (and a critical miss into a regular miss). (The name comes from a bestiary creature which has this option as a sidebar for its effect. Some GMs like to extend this option more broadly to players so that options like Healing Bomb and Reposition just work more reliably.)
If you add that house rule option, Healing Bomb becomes a dramatically better feat. I'd definitely consider it if I had a player who wanted to use Healing Bomb as IMO "oh my healing missed" just feels crappy for everyone involved, and a player getting harder to heal because a Bard cast Heroism on them is a bad time because "I buffed a player, so now its harder for another player to heal them" kinda sucks.
It's not a good feat by default in the remaster, and adopting this option is a big help.
If he has the following feats/abilities, what would you guys say are his best alchemical healing options in a single round with this build and how much would each option provide in healing? (He's 13th level)
Combine Elixers
Far Lobber
Healing Bomb
Quick Bomber
Uncanny Bomb
Double Brew
Greater Field Discovery (Chirurgeon)
Double Brew: create a freebie Q-Vial bomb, and a Combine Elixir of Life + Numbing Tonic*.
Throw the bomb for 0A as part of the 1A Quick Alch action.
1A to administer the Combine double-elixir,
leaving 1A for something else, like a Stride, Aid, etc.
This will use 2 VVs in that turn, while also using MAP 0 for a bomb throw.
If the Alch thinks it's a good idea, then they can instead burn 3 VVs by swapping the free quick vial bomb for a consumable, such as a Skunk Bomb. That's honestly a sometimes thing, as you've just burned half your VVs right there in a single turn.
*this second elixir is contextual. It's rare that you'll want to double up on raw HP healing via 2x auto-maxed El o Life, in my experience.
With the L13 healing elixir, 60 + 60 = 120 will often waste too much HP on overhealing.
After the always-good Numbing is in effect, you might want to add resistance via Energy Mutagen, or just hold onto your remaining VVs for more auto-maxed healing elixirs.
That greater field discovery is just stupidly powerful, and kinda warps the entire character when it comes online. No other benefit in the entire game works like that, where you just get the best possible math outcome, it's like a passive 40% boost or something.
Oh, and if maintaining touch range is annoying for them, I'll at least mention the Bendy-Arm Mutagen as a possibility. The L11 version is a +10ft to one's reach. It's not usually too relevant, as most Chirurgeons will have Medic and use Dr's Visitation to get close.
If they had the feat, then that 3rd action would be to open with a Dr's Visitation to get to their patient and add even more burst healing to that turn.
** spoiler omitted **
I don't think Rousing Splash is a good comparison because it's not healing or dealing with a downed person. I've seen it used to stop people that were downed and couldn't be reached and that's just not something you can do with Rousing Splash. That's why I used Stabilize as a comparison point as that seems to be where it has the most value. IMO, it's a fair and balanced alternative for ranged stopping of dying. If you're just looking at what it can do to a 'normal' person it's not going to look like a big amount of healing for the actions but when looked at as ranged stabilization, it doesn't compare badly to Stabilize as it doesn't require a 'hit' like healing bomb.
Now don't get me wrong, it's not amazing or something you'll use all the time. It's going to be used in the same limited situations like with Stabilize. I was mostly pointing out that it wasn't the worst actions you could be taking as you'd said.
I mean, you kinda are indicating just how bad of an action it is by explaining its viable use-case.
If the action begins its "real value" as a "get dying creatures off the floor" tool, that's already a very black mark to start, and allows further comparisons in that niche.
If the numbers are so bad that it's not even competing with a simple cantrip like Roushing Splash, that prompts me to start thinking about things that grant Fast Healing like Life Boost or Soothing Tonics.
Fast Healing can be placed as a prebuff *before* the 0ing hit that'll avoid the need for such actions later, or be placed reactively, and it'll continue to heal allies above 0 HP all the same.
Also makes me think about options that are so broadly useful, that they completely cover such an edge-case niche, like Dr's Visitation.
Even the consumables of found healing potions upon the KOed ally will typically be chosen by a Chir before resorting to the FV heal. If there's a chance providing enough HP to endure another hit, then that potion is preferable to the FV heal.
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I can say that across my 3 post-remaster Chirs, I've never encountered a situation where I wanted to use my FVs to get a dying ally off the floor. Not a single occurrence across 3 APs.
For my stated reasons, I can also speculate that this personal anecdote applies rather generally, that even without seeking another tool for that job, Chirurgeon PCs about Lvl 3 and up will not use FVs for that job, both because it's a niche situation to begin with, and because they will prefer to use options like spending +1A & VVs to administer a Soothing Tonic, etc.
(While the Dying status is a sometimes thing, most of the time an ally does hit 0, folks want to dump a lot of healing to get them out of 1-shot range. The "just get them up" idea is very rare, in my experience.)
I do remember using a Numbing + Soothing combo for that "not trying to heal-heal, just want to get them on their feet" during some big demon fight, as the ally had persistent damage and needed that tHP buffer to avoid hitting 0 again.
Which is to say, the FVials were outright incapable of doing that job because they heal for so little HP, that persistent damage is a lethal danger that removes the FVial heal from being a valid option.
The Soothing + Numbing could have been 5 F.Healing + 10 tHP every turn, when the FV was still stuck at avg 7 HP total. Yeah, the per turn benefits of the buffing elixirs were 2x.
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To rephrase: the use-case where you *are* within 20ft, but *not* in reach, the ally is Dying, but you're not trying to heal-heal them enough to take another hit, you really want to save on VVs or really want 1 more A via toolkit rule, is a crazy "stars need to align" scenario.
That is what it means for an ability like the Chir FV healing to be neigh-irredeemably terrible. That we have to construct once-in-a-campaign hypotheticals to actually make the action a wise choice, is all the proof we should need.
It was always designed to be a fall-back "cantrip" style heal for when the VVs hit 0, but Paizo messed up those numbers big time, and made so horrible, that spending your actions on it in combat could get your team killed due to all but throwing away your turn.
I mean, you kinda are indicating just how bad of an action it is by explaining its viable use-case.
If the action begins its "real value" as a "get dying creatures off the floor" tool, that's already a very black mark to start, and allows further comparisons in that niche.
I'm more than willing to compare it to any other cantrip level healing... Since there isn't any, it doesn't seem like such a black mark.
I can say that across my 3 post-remaster Chirs, I've never encountered a situation where I wanted to use my FVs to get a dying ally off the floor. Not a single occurrence across 3 APs.
And I've seen it used a handful of times. It was used at time where they COULDN'T use the things you suggest because they couldn't reach the target to give them a elixir or wanted to stop dying but didn't want to provoke a reaction from the Interact action from Activating the elixir next to the target which was within reach of the enemy.
Also makes me think about options that are so broadly useful, that they completely cover such an edge-case niche, like Dr's Visitation.
Sure, there are better things but they are an investment: Visitation is 2 class feats and is taking up your Archetype so there's an opportunity cost. Secondly, there is still a check so the possibility for failure is there [unless you've got assurance and a high enough Medicine skill]. Plus it's unavailable until 4th where the VV is available from 1st.
Again, I'm not saying it's amazing but it has a use and it's not the worst thing out there. You can get actions that are better but they have a cost and you might not have seen a use for them because the alchemist in your case did take the cost to get those better actions but they aren't part of the alchemist chassis and shouldn't be assumed that everyone will do so. You're argument seems to be that a 0 investment option is worse than a 3 feat one [medic dedication, visitation, battle medicine] or using 2 resources [Soothing + Numbing] and I can only say 'yeah, that should obviously be the case'. A cleric casting a single action Heal twice on someone is better than casting Stabilize too but that doesn't mean there isn't a use for Stabilize: even when you're out of your other resources, you can still fall back on your cantrips.
The Soothing + Numbing could have been 5 F.Healing + 10 tHP every turn, when the FV was still stuck at avg 7 HP total. Yeah, the per turn benefits of the buffing elixirs were 2x.
Sure, but how many battles do you get through when you give each combatant 2 elixirs for each one?
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Going from talking about Combine Elixirs to people claiming a company not wanting its customers to swear at each other is "cult like" and "cultural imperialism" is certainly one of the wilder cases of topic drift I've seen around here lately...
Maybe debate the forum rules in a thread for that and keep this one about the rule questions it's actually about.
I'm more than willing to compare it to any other cantrip level healing... Since there isn't any, it doesn't seem like such a black mark.
Well, I suppose that means you consider temp HP to not be healing. Yes, it's an unspoken design rule that there is no 0 CD 0 resource healing in the system. Don't forget that Chir is not exempt from this. Before Lvl 11's contextual cool down bypass, so what is Chir's capstone last level ability for 1-10 APs, any healing from an FV will put that heal on a 10min cooldown.
Trying to use them for "normal healing" means being unable to use them as a Dying removal option. Which would mean acknowledging them as having so low value, that they really are not a "healing tool." (Which again, is a serious mark of them being very badly designed/balanced)
Whoops, forgot about Paradox of Opposites Witch.
They get Trade Death for Life, which is a 1A 30ft cantrip that does outright heal allies and get them off the floor. As the distinguishing rider effect on a cantrip that's primary feature is being a coveted 1A damaging cantrip.
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IMO, Rousing Splash is very fair to use as a comparison for Chir FVials, and it being a tHP instead of +HP efect has often been the reason it's been cast, as that allows for prebuffing and avoids worries about overheal.
If a door slam or other event cuts us off from the foes, and I don't want to spend resources on helping the party, Rousing Splash is going to be much higher up on my priories over the FVial healing.
It's 60ft range being greater than Stride is another serious plus; the is/not variable around allies being < or > than 1 Stride away does genuinely shape a Chir's decision flowchart.
But, if you are considering the FVial heal to only be a Dying removal tool, and not a general healing tool, then it does mean that R.Splash has a different use case altogether.
If you want other comparisons, Kineticist has a number of impulses that heal with cool downs instead of resources. In the niche of small heals to just get allies standing, they can even maintain Sanguivolent Roots, which will heal all allies in the AoE every sustain. Torrent in the Blood is an AoE cone heal, Fresh Produce is a single target 1A+1A with crazy scaling, Oceans Balm is a great 1A touch range heal, Sea Glass Guardians has the heal when crit effect, etc.
Yes, if a character has literally no other healing tool to end the Dying condition, the FVial healing has a use-case. No, I was never claiming otherwise. And no, that does not redeem the action into being reclassified a good ability.
The point is that the FVial healing is so bad, that it's a "trap" to choose it in most situations you might expect it to be useful. Again, the option to "pop a 0 VV heal" sound good on paper, but 98% of the time, some form of offense or setplay action would have been better.
Even if we are limiting it to the Alchemist Class, the new version of Healing Bomb did add splash healing, lol.
This means that not only is an HBomb getting allies off the floor on miss, but it also means that on hit, you are able to AoE heal your team in 1A. If self-targeted Strikes auto-hit at your table, that gives 1A HBomb outright supremacy over 1A FVials when adjacent. And I consider HBomb to be a bad trap of a feat, lol.
And because HBombis a bomb throw instead of being a hard-limited 20ft effect, it can be used beyond 20ft. It also means that any Alch w/ Quick Bomber can select Healing Bomb and have access to a 1A "off the floor" heal, one that's kinda an upgrade over Chir's much of the time. If that "niche" of Chir is poachable by all Alchs for 1 feat, yet it is rarely done, that tells you that being able to perform said niche has lower value than the single feat. (and spoiler, that "niche's value" is worth less than prepping a single R1 spell for the day)
Here's a convoluted AoN search for 1A spells that should catch most healing options. If you're talking about 1A, that means FV healing is burning a VV, and as small of a niche as that may be, there's serious competition in there when you allow spells that cost a resource.
If you expand that to 2A to talk about FV healing as a 0 VV option, then the notion of get-off-the-floor being a niche of significant value is kinda laughed out of the room.
There are too many low rank spells that can do that, yet no one bothers. Even the humble Spirit Link is a R1 spell that does the job with a 10 min duration and +10ft range over FV healing.
And yes, it is fair to compare a once p 10 min FV heal with a R1 slotted spell.
And it is beyond ridiculous that a R1 10 min buff spell does the job better than Chirurgeon's supposed signature cantrip.
(Which maybe should tell you that Chir's FV healing was never intended as a "Dying removal" tool, but was supposed to be a "valid" healing ability, but was botched that horrendously badly)
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The point of barraging comparisons is to show that even when they are all over the system, you never see other PCs actually using specific "get off the floor" actions like Spirit Link. Because that's such a niche / bad action, most characters do not bother with seeking them out, nor with preparing them at higher levels where lower R slots struggle to even be cast.
Chirurgeon's FV healing appears usable because their options are so limited and "bad," that it makes the in-class crumbs look larger in comparison. But, as one becomes more familiar with pf2 generally, that effect fades fast.
If folks have fun playing Chir and using the FV heal, that's a great thing. The whole point of playing is to have fun.
From a game design and numbers PoV, the bad math there makes it harder & harder for the FV heal to be usable as the table's combat challenge rises.
Limiting it to the APs I've played, I am willing to say that at Paizo's expected default for Abm Vlts, Gatewalkers, Stolen Fate, Str o Thousands, and Ruby Phoenix all have a default difficulty too high for the FV heal as written.
Any Chir Alch that wants an improved familiar has to go out of their class to get one, and Witch is right there, an INT class also granting a spell list alongside the familiar, while even allowing them to stay on-theme via Caldron to escape lockout. Just the base dedication granting the familiar + Rousing Splash gives them a supporting cantrip that'll usable much more often than the FVial healing.
Pathfinder 2E is a game system build around archetyping at its core.
Every class feat has to compete against off-class feats at 1/2 level. That's the point. The on-class L8 feats are supposed to be better than the off-class L4s.
This is why they even go through the effort of setting non-class Archetype copies of class feats to required a higher level than a main-class can get them.
Due to the 1/2 level rate and lacking the on-class chassis synergy, going off-class is not supposed to be a clear upgrade.
"Some classes have bad feats" doesn't work as a counterpoint in the pf2 system due to this core of archetyping. It is a correct statement, but that statement itself is an admission of a class getting a failing grade for its design.
When classes like Alchemist miss the balance mark so badly that in-class options are blatantly inferior to archetype options, you've got a problem.
The archetyping system means that no player is personally screwed by bad Alchemist balance, as they can use archetypes to build something able to contribute to their party. But it also causes trouble as it removes pressure from the devs to fix those classes so far below the curve. And it disproportionately punishes players that trust Paizo's design, as well as those that see remaining on-class as a good / an ideal to strive for.
No class's primary gimmick is supposed to be outright inferior to an archetype gimmick, but that's the reality for Chirurgeon and Alchemist.
Medic + Dr's Visitation being so much better than any 2 feat combo inside the class is a real problem, as are all the other archetype options like Witch and now Oracle
(which offers divine spells like Rousing Splash, focus spells, & non-FP cursebound actions. Very good pick for any PC that wants to be more of a healer)
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All this rambling is orbiting around the issue of Chir's present design and numbers being comparatively bad within the system.
As such, the best advice I can offer is to consider what style of archetype one thinks would fit best the character, and use that to give the limited alchemy items more room to breathe.
Pf2's balance for supporting options is usually quite generous, with Chirurgeon as an outlier.
Which means that archetyping to seek more support/healing, and using your alchemy more offensively, is going to be a much better idea than attempting the opposite.
My SoT Chir is built around testing/maximizing Strikes via things like Wiz + Ranger + Archer, and the results have not been that good. Even with luxuries like Hunted Shot and all the little dmg buffs, at least 7 feats spent, it so much better to use the 2 feat get of Dr's Visitation than to make Strikes, that it's not funny.
Even with supposed x-factors like Reaction Strike via Disrupt Prey (and the ~"bow is melee" feat from Archer), trying to get value out of Strike-boosting feats cannot compare with healing actions like Dr's Visitation, or the options available to another Chir PC that went Witch.
It's not just the Alch's lagging accuracy, it's imo more significant that you'll be missing the core Strike boost/gimmick of a real martial, like Sneak Attack & Debilitations, etc. The smaller reward on hit for an Alchemist is the big difference, in my experience.
This SoT PC has changed a lot across the levels, and pretty early it became a test max a throwing build. Now that I've had enough time w/ Archer, I can say that throwing does do a bit more damage, though my GM allows Hunted Shot work with throws.
I hate to keep laying on the "balance sucks" talk, but one of the reasons my next time skip rework is going to swap from Archer to Gunslinger is because the Bola Shot consumable is outright better than what I can do via feats, and such a consumable is incompatible with throwing builds. I had hoped that prepping alch ammo would help the Archery style to overtake throws, but it really hasn't made much of a difference. Even the L10(!) Archer feat to Shoot + Trip without MAP seems worse in actual play than Bola Shot, which instead uses the Strike to check against the foe Reflex.
While it's baseline Alchemist + Quick Bomber, being able to throw things like Skunk Bombs for 1A is genuinely good, typically better than mixmaxed 6+ feat enhanced Strikes.
If you can give your VV supply more room for bombs, etc, by taking supporting archetypes, you'll have a better time overall.
I still recommend to keep a backup weapon runed though. The freebie bombs are a bit too inferior to skip a weapon outright, imo.
Though if you don't have the Lab Assistant familiar, then I think ditching a weapon to keep both hands open after L9 for the Quick Bomber + Double Brew combo would be the way to go. Getting pseduo-0A Quick Alch has priority over the improvement to Strike damage, especially when you'll still have Handwraps as an option.