Is anyone on this fight? I'm absolutely getting my arse handed to me every time. Can't seem to find a good tactic. Am I missing something obvious?

If you mean the Letho boss in chapter one then there is one tactic that works (atleast if you have the double roll distance):

Just roll around the room in which you are fighting and evade his signs and bombs and only attack him with strong attack once when he misses his attacks and his back is towards you. Do not try to strike him twice because he will most likely parry the attack and strike you to the ground and when he puts his shield up then kite him until his shield is down. Do not ever in the fight try to attack him from front.

Now just rinse and repeat the backstabbing move about 50 times then you should be done.

Edit: Forgot to mention that you should keep quen sign up all the time.

That sounds more like a way of winning a fight that you're supposed to lose. Is this a battle that is supposed to happen, or or has the player made a wrong choice to end up here?

I've just reached it, and I have no points in dodge or in daggers (which someone else mentioned works great). So is this really all there is to go on?

Having plenty of difficulty on this one so far.

A better tactic is to wait till his shield goes down, then get in his face and hit aard and follow up quickly with light/heavy/heavy

once you hear a TING hit aard again and do it over

repeat until the fight is over

Gvaz, I'm using your method and I managed to get almost 1/4 of his health down so far. Thats my best =P. Is there any way to prepare for this fight beforehand? Like if I drink potions before facing off against the Arachas, will the effects still be active for this fight? I get the feeling some bleeding oils might help maybe too.

After beating the Arachas I told Iorveth that I had things to do so I met him at the ruins and drank potions before I started the event.

You need only 2 things to beat this fight, Yrden sign and heavy attack. Keep running and dodging, dropping Yrdens until he's stuck and his shield is down (if his shield is not down drop another Yrden near him). Run behind him hit him 3 or 4 times with heavy attack. Repeat 2-3 times and you win. I used this method on hard difficulty not sure if it works on insane.

Well, first of all you only need to get his health down halfway (if you mean the fight near the end of chapter 1). Other than that, I had upgraded Quen so I'd activate Quen and then just be really aggressive (combination of light and heavy attacks - very much in Letho's 'face')). Of course, avoiding Letho when his own Quen was active. I hear throwing darts are really effective as well, but I didn't see the point in upgrading them.

Thanks for the tip there AzNheadbanger I'll see if I can't make some headway doing that. (Nice screen name too haha :D )

cbickell: Thanks for the tip there too, I'll also give that a shot. I tend to find Yrden to be my favorite sign, so I'll have another shot with it.

I would suggest applying Quen on yourself, rolling around (helps a lot if you have the ability that gives 100% speed when rolling) and laying traps, throwing bombs/knifes at him and he should be down pretty fast. "killed" him in under a minute on hard like this...

This. Throwing knives are ridiculously over powered and can take him down in no time if you have enough.

1. Wait for his quen to run out.

2. use ard.

3. close in on him, unleash a single quick strike followed by 2x heavy strikes

4. roll back out.

rinse and repeat as necessary, and keep moving.

Beat him on hard without losing health, just used yrden and then set up snares and lead him into them. I had about 10 snares but didn't have to use them all, was talented in the +bomb and trap damage in alchemy. Also tossed what daggers I had early on into him.

I don't want to spoil anything, but lets just say you were halfway there.

I'm sure you can get another 1/4th ;)

Just avoid him completely until his shield is down, and run in with aard and do LMB/RMB/RMB

It's how I did it on normal.

you didnt give anything away Gvaz - someone else in here already mentioned you only have to half way kill him haha.