At 55 here is how a fight goes for me. I debuff/buff as needed, headbutt anything nasty or to help with shadows, maybe cast an efficient spell like bludgeon, at 100tp SC and burst if its helpful(MP drainkiss).

That would be each fight for me. I spend most of my time just doing melee damage.

I can kill faster by blowing through MP on big but not very efficient spells or casting things like bludgeon which are a bit more MP friendly. That also means resting every fight or two.

EDIT: This is vs EP-DC. It seems to me that I can actually get exp faster by doing fov/gov on EM-T and resting between each fight.... sort of like how a blm solos.