Most enemies in the game has 12-13 wits/initiative point. Go above that and you start first. This is later increased to 17-20 as you go through the game.
In other words, there's no practical way to keep your initiative ahead of the enemy. Let's say you can reach level 7 in the alpha, and let's say you start out with 10 Wit. You'll need to dedicate all 10 points from 5 out of 6 total level-ups in Wits just to keep it at 20, leaving you with 2 for the rest. That seems like a pretty lopsided investment.
There's no reason to throw 2 points into Str/Finesse/Int every level. You either invest to go first or go last and learn how to make learn how to position to minimize the damage from slower action. Only a few fight will really punish you for being slow with maximum damage like the Witch Redaka fight (who always teleport to the same spot first) or "Wrong Soul Jar" fight with Cryo mage completely destroying you if you group in the middle.
3 Points from Blood rose (Do the Arena quest before drinking your first one and don't die. Very easy to accomplish especially on ranged char.)
3 points (or was it 4) from character creation
and 1/1 Finesse/Ranger build with some Initiative gear that usually come with Finesse from NPCs. One of the shop reset from either leveling or playing for an hour will likely create a good initiative gear for you to buy if you visit the shop once in a while.
This is how you build a "fast" character and still deal huge damage. I was able to go first in pretty much every fight in the game except for maybe the last one in the AI 2.0. Can't recall about Dallis but my initiative was insanely high while still investing in tons of damage.
On the other hand, slower characters we consider to be "Powerhouse" or "Healer" never get a single point in Wit for the sake of best performance.
Powerhouse want to hit the hardest they can and join the fight last to wipe the whole team. 2H build is a good example of a char you can just go 100% Str with so your combo can kill 3-4 enemies at all level all the time.
Healer should never be fast because the slower they go, the more they can heal especially with Healing Ritual unless you jump into a group of 5 to get 100-0 before the healer gets to act.
IF you want to act in the middle, buff yourself with something like "Burn-my-eyes" since that gives like 5-7 wits so you don't have to invest in stat.
