WRT Taurog - I thought you were a Gnomes, spells and late game god-chaining combo kinda player when not nudged by the PQI so I didn't see Taurog as an obvious fit for that, though I certainly don't doubt you can use him. I think for me Taurog's biggest problem is the inventory fillup rather than the max mana loss... makes it a lot trickier to work with stuff as you go in longer game scenarios with more nuance.
JJ/Binlor for Rats - JJ is certainly superb on Rats... I find the inventory restrictions of JJ probably hit the Rat harder than most characters (-1 inventory slot, another for Bear Mace, a third for Weytwut, a fourth to get boosts; you might not be in a position to level out of it if you find you get a super-early poison on a tough dungeon... none of these are insurmountable but Binlor is basically pure positives) and think on most maps Binlor is just ballistically crazy good on Rats. Rexx is more of a bother for me than Bleaty. The one map where I'm 100% sure Binlor is better is VHOS. The two where I'm doubtful are Cursed Oasis (where I think I'd go EM) and Ick (where Jehora seems like the best call to me). I think I probably prefer Binlor because magic scares me and punching things to death at very low level is fun (see Taurog
) but there's nothing wrong with JJ 
).