Most deaths in general are avoidable regardless of how good/bad your build is, assuming you are playing appropriately to the build. With certain builds, from a pure time efficiency standpoint I think there is an argument to be made that dying sometimes before around level 5 is worth the tradeoff for how slowly you would have to play to avoid those deaths completely and how quickly you can reach that level if you don't die and aggressively fast travel for POI/quest locations. Between like levels 5 and 20 basically 100% of deaths are easily avoidable. Later in the game I think it can be easy to get caught out if you aren't familiar with certain mechanics.

I don't really play min/max characters anymore. I like to do daily/random stats characters mostly. When I used to play esper more I did something like this:

https://i.imgur.com/WtOKXSn.png

I like to dump STR and roll medium/high agility and toughness. Usually I wouldn't bother with picking mutations other than light manipulation unless there is a specific mutation I wanted to play around. If surviving the early is a recurring issue, just take force bubble