Especially the snow wolves. They must have titanium steel fur :) and they can kill you without you being able to swing once with stun lock (I was using 1.75 with all things activated).

Heh, wolves are definitely tough until you get the timing down. As long as you can time right-click quick swings to interrupt their attacks you can hold them off (even whole packs at once), although you also have to watch your spacing with them due to the mentioned jumping attack. Like most of the combat in Gothic it will kick your ass until you practice it enough to really get the hang of it, then it's not too much of an issue.

Aren't wargs even thougher than winter wolves? There are less of them in the game I think but individual ones seem to have more armour. Anyway my point is wolves are nasty because they will hit you even with perfect timing. When they prepare for a jump they cannot be hit and the window of opportunity to land a hit once they do jump is so short (like a quarter of the short rmb swing) that most of the time you are lying on the ground when they connect.

And what is it with this stunlock everyone is talking about? I have no real experience with G3 besides CP1.74 with alt. balancing and ai on. I don't recall any situation when the combat system felt unfair. When I die I know what got me screwed. Usually it's fighting on slopes (so my hits don't connect), with low health (so even a single mistake is deadly) or with too many enemies at once (if I was too lazy to lure them away). And for the record I die a lot;)

Without Alternate AI enemies have a tendency to go into a combo chain after striking you one time, early on it often resulted in death.

But except against certain enemies it's actually easier than Alternate AI, since you just have to combo chain them.

I'm still kind of baffled how it got approved (though maybe it didn't, since I heard G3 was pushed out the doors before PB was ready).

Stun lock was really bad right at the beginning (well, there were a lot of problems with G3 at the beginning). Some enemies (boars in particular) could attack much too fast, resulting in them often being able to completely stun-lock you if they got even one hit in.

Wargs/snow wolves - I never dug into it but I felt that they were the same in combat with just a different fur color. I really don't know if the warg is tougher or not. The stun lock is what I was talking about in my first post on this thread. You get hit and are stunned meaning you can do nothing for a short time. Problem is, you can be hit again before you can react especially by the faster beasts like wolves resulting in a quick death. I found that the best way to fight many beasts was to run then turn, strike, turn run, repeat. Wolves will follow you forever (it seems) so I often headed to a friendly location to get help.

This is purely anecdotal but I do believe Wargs are tougher than any type of beast in Gothic 3. The reason I think that is that a Warg (with my assistance) managed to dispatch a camp full of bandits, as well helping clear out Gotha. Wargs are cool anyway, of all the "aggressive" beasts in Gothic 3, I believe you can get closer to them without triggering their aggressiveness than any other beast. Hooray for not having to climb a mountain to avoid making some rhino angry because he saw you three miles away heading in the opposite direction.

I had a warg in Gotha that killed the demon after I ran to heal. Got back and the demon was history.

Wargs are awesome no doubt about it, especially in Gotha...which is why I've mentally renamed the town of Gotha to Wargotha.

Haha, Wargotha, not bad! I only tamed Wolves until now but I'll definitely get a Warg next time. I found Lurkers weren't bad either. They chain attacks at a very good rate and they often manage to interrupt foes. They work well with you backstabbing.

Interesting, I haven't tried to tame a Lurker (I'll have to try that in the future!) but Crocodiles are fairly useful as well, in my experience. I've tamed Lions too, that was a disappointment! I wonder if you could tame a Shadowbeast...

Hmm, I have already 3 playthroughs and many starts without finishing the game and never experienced that Wargs should be that strong. I usually stand ouf of their way until I could easily beat them and never used taming at all (I prefer skills that work in any situation). Also the stunning is as far as I remember less of an problem the further you develop your character (dont know which attributes helps you in this). Another way is to kill them just before they can get close enough (as a Mage or an Archer).

Other strong enemies: Crowds of Orcs (Nordmar), Dragons, Trolls, Ogres, did I forget about some?

Nice! I know Ogres cannot be tamed. I tried Mine Crawlers and they're tough as hell! I used one to tank two Ogres. Not as strong as human companions but still. Due to their large size, they can also prevent foes from moving to their target. Only problem is they sometime turn against you. I think if you hit them with projectiles.
Taming is an extremely useful skill! There's no duration limit to it so it's an additional companion! Since this game is about survival, it really helps! Especially on the more challenging difficulty levels.
Granted, you could use a scroll and heal the beast. But you wouldn't be able to use teleport stones since it causes them to leave group.

Without using anything from the community patch, wolves and ogres are by far the hardest. The only way to touch an ogre in melee is with a long weapon and basically perfect timing. Swing, the ogre will dodge, swing again at the perfect moment, and you might get a hit in with the furthest tip of your weapon. Repeat constantly. Every mistake (attacking too quickly or slowly), will cost you probably your life.

Wolves are basically mowing machines. If one gets close to you, it's pretty much over because their attack animation is like 0.2 seconds long and they spam it constantly, locking you down until death. You might get away by spamming jump and praying, but it's a slim chance. One or a couple are again manageable with a long weapon and keeping them away from you. A pack of wolves is an eqivalent of a raid boss, where you will either have to resort to spells, cheesing or many many loads.

For both enemies, it is also absolutely crucial to never back them up against a wall, because in that case they stop dodging , which is the only thing keeping you alive (forcing them to dodge your attacks instead of attacking) and they just fully unload into you, meaning quick death.

Never travel without a spear or a halberd. Some enemies pretty much can't be touched with other weapons.

Any human enemy can just be left click spammed to death. Animals and monsters are by far the most dangerous.