Yep, except the Elf Berserker doesn't have to go spellcastey, you simply hit HIS thresholds along the way. It's strange but it works (also if you get two STR potions and 2 Schadenfraude potions it can be entertaining). Oh, and you can also use Cydstep with Turog junk. Or just get 2 hits of Apheelsick whenever. Stuff like that, low effort perks which add up.
Bloodmages being strictly better as gnomes - just quit it, ok? With Gnomes, there's a very simple rule - if something has any spellcasting capability whatsoever it's strictly better as a gnome, and if it doesn't, you don't need much spellcasting capability you just need to tack some mana on it. You're cheezing something which can't really be balanced in this system and has been regarded as inherently unfixable since the dawn of time and which also causes anything related to spellcasting to have two separate modes - gnome and anything else. Halfling BM's are interesting because they're the only Wizard Tower Class who's simplest gameplay option isn't to just take a gnome and stick some mana on it (and can beat mazes purist and kick quite a bit off ass). Gnome's are always just gnomes, you pick a gnome and play a gnome and win, that's it, there's no point to discussing them because they require almost no interaction with anything and just effortlessly break anything that's otherwise fine on anyone else. Refreshment for 90% refill with the most leisurely timing on glyph conversion? You're aware that you're not playing the same game? And that there isn't much that can be done about it?
There's no point proving anything about gnomes, I don't get why you think there's ever been in any doubt about them. Just about any build, not just any spellcaster build, but, like, probably 80% builds including melee builds were kinda discovered becase whoever went for it found an excuse not to go cheeze gnomes in whatever way instead. They're not undiscovered, most people have just put them aside (or at least I have). I'm not sure there was a single thing which caused more nerfs and changes than them in the whole game.
Monks have had less damage penalties and 50% resist both - it never occured to people because they were cheezing Gnomes and measuring everything by what you can do with them. Ooodles of things were purpusefully overbuffed to see if people would pick up on them - no, people were cheezing gnomes. Stuff which was even stronger mathematically, was difficult to spot - because Gnomes were just simpler. Etc.
The BM used to have regular mana, and when deciding upon which of his many beneficial features to nerf, and clue us in on what they'd like us to use with him more, they nerfed the mana pool, just so we'd maybe try something BUT gnomes (or possibly elves) with him for the love of christ, just once, just one time figure out that there's other stuff than Gnomes in the game. I took that as a pointer and TRIED other stuff with him, and it was incredibly fun and surprisingly workable, even busted occasionally, but no - the most stupidly reductive race which makes the traditionally uninteractive glyph spam even more unitneractive because you just get refills out of stuff lying on the ground is, lo and behold, numericaly superior to EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE GAME.
IT IS!