With all of the talk about how awful the combat is, I decided that I might start a video series on tips for fighting specific enemies. It seems that a lot of people get stuck in the habit of just Quen'ing up and then swinging and dodging which leads to frustration because enemies can often parry or dodge your attacks and then gang up and interrupt you. I've discovered that it can take a while to make these videos because a) I need to find a spot with a decent number of the enemy which can take a long time, especially since I've already cleared a lot of the game, b) rendering takes awhile if I have to string together multiple videos, and c) uploading videos takes awhile with affordable Canadian internet, so I might not continue the series and, instead, just play the game and maybe beat the story at some point. I wanted to record a couple, however, to remind people of some of the tools that they have and what you need to think about whenever you come across a different enemy in the game.
The basic thing you need to do is think about what the enemy's strengths are and then how you can overcome them. For example, humans parry a lot and cluster around you which, if you just tried to use sword swings, it would take awhile to burn through their stamina (or waiting around to parry their swing) and/or you'd just end up interrupted from getting hit. Their strengths are their parrying and crowding so bypass those and use them against them: throw direct damage bombs like Grapeshot or Dancing Star which will hit a lot of them since they cluster and then knock over or drop their guard with Aard (or Igni if you're using Dancing Star since Aard will put out their fire) since, again, they cluster. Make it so that you can constantly interrupt/knock them over with Aard by using a Tawny Owl potion. By the time you do 2-3 swings, Aard will be back up for you to crowd control or get instant kills from knocked over opponents. Don't just butt your head against their parry wall: use your tools to get around it.
Another example: wolves. Wolves are really annoying because they attack so fast from every direction as a group and without much of a tell to signal you to dodge/parry... so make sure that they never get to attack you as a group. Use Tawny Owl so that you can light a bunch of them on fire with Igni which locks down a number of them and let's you get a lot of free attacks where they just can't respond. Don't just dodge around and hope that Quen will let you get a hit in without getting interrupted: lock them down and prevent them from attacking.
As you will see from my videos, I don't play perfectly (in my defence, I'm a bit distracted trying to remember what I should say) but, by taking advantage of my various tools, I don't have to to completely dominate opponents. Here are the videos I've done so far:
Wolves
Humans
Ghouls
Drowners
I'm definitely going to do wraiths next (when I can find a spot with a bunch of them) because they can be pretty annoying. If there's any particular creature you want me to do, let me know possibly with a screenshot of your map so that I can find them. I've completed a lot of the points of interest so it may not be as easy for me to find a particular enemy.