The only reason people even consider CF as a starter is because of its god-tier mapping and because you can build it tanky so bosses are still doable, albeit slow.

TS Occultist isn't a strong starter by any definition of the term, and the only reason you can consider it "lower budget" now is that CF is literally >400 times more popular as a starter (473 vs. 1 on day 5 of Sentinel).

It's not a terrible build but compared to good starters, it's much more of a hassle to get going, has worse DPS, less survivability, and isn't much faster when (low) mapping either. Also, Fyregrass should've known that Darkscorn would be extremely expensive early on if only a few dozen of his viewers decide to play his build.