I facerolled this game on death march difficulty and it was no challenge at all for me , The witcher 3 combat is very casual . Enemies are just hard hitting damage sponges , that's it really . The game might be somewhat hard in the beggining , because you are unfamiliar with mechanics and enemies , but once you learn their moves and find out that you are invincible in the beggining of roll/dodge , you can stomp anything .
If you are interested in my build or my opinion about skills read the following . In the beggining I've spent my points on quen and axii , you don't have to maximize them , just get alternative modes and put rest of the skill points into the sword tree . Quen alternative mode is the best thing for healing in this game and axii will allow you to win any human combat situation . You see , on death march difficulty enemeis deal much more damage than you ( I find it very immersion breaking , why bandits with wood clubs hit harder than Geralt does it with sword ?! ) and axii boosts their damage even farther , so they will oneshot each other , you can just keep distance and apply axii over and over again ( archers can spoil the fun for you , but you can use quen to protect yourself or charm archers , or rush them down and gut them ) , besides , humans block about 98% of time and it's hard to hit them and it's even harder when you fight a crowd , thats actually the main reason you want to use axii , to avoid enemy's block . You should use quen alternative mode only to restore your health and nothing more , if you need protection you use regular mode , I like quen because it allows you to click enemies to death ignoring their counterattack , if they counter you can just continue hitting them ( this works better on monsters , since humans usually block immediately after you hit them ) . So , when you fight monsters you use quen and hit them recklessly until they break your shield , but I strongly recommend not to forget abot roll/dodge and attacks ( you should roll as little as possible , because you can't hit back after roll ) , especially when you fight monsters that hit hard ( golems , cyclops , griffins etc ) , your energy doesn't regenerate that fast to ignore their attacks . I chose medium armor ( griffin set ) with griffin school techniques skill you gain a solid boost to energy regeneration which allows you to spam quen more often , the sign power bonus isn't that good untill late game when quen can block 2-3 hits , so you take medium armor mostly for energy regeneration . If you want you can pick up swords from different school ( bear or feline ) , but I was too lazy to do so , so it's up to you to decide . I barely used stones power ups ( those which you put in swords and armor , I don't know how they called in the english version of the game ) , I only put some of them in swords for sings power , because I wanted my swords to have runes ( but you can reach 15% addition sign power on each sword it's quite nice ) . Now when we finished with signs , I will tell you about swords . And it looks like nothing in this game can outdamage sword ( except charmed enemies ) it mihgt not look so in the beggining , but the farther you progres the more damage you will deal with your sword , in order to turn your sword into rape machine , you should spend your points into strong attacks . I know a lot of people feel like strong attacks are obsolete , I've been thinking that myself , but I was wrong . Why strong attacks are good ? The answer is simple armor/block penetration and potion made from archgriffin mutagen . I was surprised by how much my damage increased with sunder armor skill ( I don't know if it works with fast attacks ) and block penetration strike is very useful , not for damage but for block penetration . When you use rend ( block breaking strike ) you don't need to charge it , you should strike as fast as possible , as I said you need it only to break block , but you can skip this skill if you want , it was boring for me to fight humans using axii that's why I invested in it ( rend doesn't deal much damage even fully charged , regular strong attack hit harder about 90% of time ) . I think that light attacks are somewhat lacking , whirlwind is quite weak and crippling strike damage is extremly low . so , about archgriffin potion , it allows you to deal 10% of enemies current health with strong attacks ( if you have any stamina , it doesn't matter how much you have , but it will drain all of it ) , this potion allows you to beat even toughest enemies in just about minute , with enhanced crit chance and amor penetration your strong attacks will be devastating ( I roflstomped Eredin like if he was a child ) .
Well , I think that's it , you can use this knowledge to become a king of The Witcher 3 . I was dissapointed in combat , it's too easy repetitive , unbalanced and unpolished . The first witcher game still was my favourite game combat wise .
