Looking to maximize time and clear through ultimate on a first character to have a fun character to play and farm gear with. Simple question which from the nightblade mixes listed plays out the best? Thanks for the input!
Poison/Acid SS Witch Hunter.
agree
no doubt that char would be the easiest to gear up and farm with, especially for a first char
well i mean a DEE WH
most DW melee are hard to gear at the moment, as they are naturally squishy and u have to find the exact mix of DPS/defense.
casters are generally easier to gear due to various immunities like blastshield/mirror as well as not having to facetank, this will allow you to still do ok without having the right amount of defense.
I see, I have been leveling a purifier that seems to be melting through the campaign. Do you think that would be an easier first character to farm with?
Personally, I used two characters to start off with the farming: a Conjurer (lol, pet builds are cake walks at the start of most games, Grim Dawn is no exception) and an Arcanist spamming PRM. But I later found that with a maxed OFF, I can one-shot most generic mobs in the entire screen anyway. So in terms of killing speed, Arcanist takes the cake.
If you’re talking Nightblade specifically, I found it to be Spellbreaker who kills the fastest at the start. Open each battle with Shadow Strike, then use Ring of Steel (with freeze modifier) to stun, and Amarasta’s Blade Burst (ABB) on left mouse button before it defaults to auto-attacks.
Granted, I only tested this battle setup with a non-cold Nightblade, so my stun time was only 1.5 seconds, not 2.8 seconds (freeze). But the target I Shadow Strike to always dies (or if not, gets stunned and might as well be dead, unless it’s a boss). Then everything around it dies to Ring of Steel. And if they don’t die to it, my auto-attacks will slaughter them within the following 1.5 seconds.
But I recently tested a cold melee build, and I instantly fell in love with it. It’s not a class where I just hold my LMB until I see something that moves, and use RMB (where I put my Shadow Strike/Blitz for easy access) on it, and then continue holding LMB. That playstyle makes me doze off… But also, I found that as a Soldier, if I fight a ridiculously difficult boss, it’s hard to burst it down and then run away to safety to prepare for another burst, because a Soldier is slow. Meanwhile, Nightblade has Blade Barrier (and/or Mirror of Ereoctes if you are a Spellbreaker) as a panic button, and Veil of Shadow really helps out in slowing down boss attacks. You can run away from bosses after Shadow Striking in thanks to that skill. (Soldiers, nay… Duke it out and hope you don’t die.)
And if you really want to exploit OFF’s one-shotting feature, you can always use it to piggyback your Spellbreaker to higher levels. A maxed OFF is insanely useful, but if you don’t want it later, you can easily respec it back down later in the game. 25 or 50 iron per skill point is a cheap price to pay…
I try not to use OFF to piggyback my Spellbreaker though. It spoils the fun of playing one. 
For me, the process is more important than reaching the endgame in the shortest time possible.
Poison witch hunter is definitely top tier. Pierce infiltrator is a great choice as well (on par or superior to blademaster IMO). Sabo is pretty underwhelming right now… a far cry from the sabo of old.