So, in my run I'd come up with something considerably different from the accepted Speed Ninja build, and mostly for the sake of the early game, I think it's competitive at least.

The cornerstone is the Guts skill, which adds (20¤level) Atk and Def for a fixed duration whenever direct damage knocks you below 50% health. If you invest in it heavily, you get some absolutely ridiculous margins of gain, at the cost of a much riskier run.

I get the Power Wine from saving the kid on the pirate ship rather than from the arena, since I have enough power through Guts that I'm not losing considerable time waiting til Driazhek. This means no bread, but again, low health is paramount to consistent Guts triggers.

I take a final Vit value of 25, which is the "can reliably not be one-shotted by anything barring Deatharte's axe and blast, which are easily avoidable anyway" point. It's harsh, but with bottomless Healing Water to blow through, it's not bad.

The Critical skill is pretty... well, critical to my speed as well, since it scales just fine with Power Wine gains, the same way Break Armor and basically nothing else would. Weapon skill unfortunately only amplifies the gain from the weapon itself, which is a very minimal increase in the scheme of things.

Another benefit of using claws that I can see is the benefit of its charge attack being full-speed mobile. There are a lot of points where I can wipe enemies out without stopping by grazing past them with it, giving me a pretty good margin of additional EXP without costing much if any time. There are plenty of "roadblock" enemies that can be cast aside quickly with it, as well.

My execution so far is highly inefficient, but I was wondering what other perspectives thought of the route and its potential. I think it can easily compete with Speed Ninja due to how much time you save early game and a seamless way to avoid the arena, but I was wondering what someone else thought of it.