After playing The Witcher 1 a few weeks ago, I'm currently going through The Witcher 2 on PC, and I am stuck in the fight against Letho.

First time I fought him, I tried killing him for about an hour, and after 20 reloads, concluded that I wasn't prepared.
So I went on the internet to look for ways to kill him.
I also went through the wiki to make sure I had the best gear available.

So, I got myself the Hunter armor with three diamonds improvements and I use the Espadon (20-25) as my steel sword.
I did all the optionnal quests before that point, so I think that I'm as far as I'm going to get as far as experience is concerned.
I built about 20 grapeshots, got myself 13 superb well-balanced daggers, drank two potions, a swallow and a mongoose just before meeting Ioverth.
I also looked up every single tactic to defeat Letho.

After 15 more attemps, I'm not closer than before. Here are the details :
- He doesn't seem to take any damage from bombs
- Hitting him with a dagger often makes him block all subsequent daggers throws
- Yrden has little to no effect on him. As a general rule, I haven't been able to backstab him even once during all my attempts. He always automatically faces me when I hit.
- I can't really spam my heavy attacks since he is always faster than me and interrupts me while my sword is in the air.
- My fast attacks almost don't do any damage to him
- As a general rule, fighting him with my sword is impossible since on average, he will always manage to hit me (if I block, he still damages me, If a avoid, he gets Quen up), and even when I managed to corner him, he got rid of me with Aard.

On the other hand, when I try to avoid him when he is protected by Quen, he often manages to stab me from 4 feet away, meaning I always take a lot of damage when trying to avoid him because the room is too tight, and he always has a shot at me when I have to go past him to get to the other side of the room.

Long story short : I never manage to make a dent in his life bar (except once or twice out of sheer luck), and he kills me very quickly all the time. Swallow seems to be useless as it regenerates my life VERY SLOWLY.

So, how am I supposed to kill this guy? I've spent two hours on that shitty combat, and it's not even remotely fun. I don't know what was the thinking behind it, but I'm extremely disappointed by the combat in this game. It's either easy or frustrating. But I didn't find it getting challenging in a good way, ever, since it's very time-sensitive, and Geralt does not follow my commands in a timely fashion.

So really, what's the trick?

I beat him on normal with all my spec points unassigned (because I couldn't think of how to spec my character properly and I didn't want to google for a build - feel free to laugh at me :P) simply by parrying and hitting him once or twice when he seemed vulnerable. No bombs, no dodging, no signs apart from Aard. Yes, you still take damage from parrying (which is totally stupid if you ask me) but it's doable. Of course it took me a lot of time and a lot of failures...

A less painful way, I guess, would be to use Quen (if you're specced for it) hit him a couple of times, jump away like a bunny on crack, reapply Quen, rinse and repeat. He's immune to Yrden, and he's resistant (but not immune) to Aard. Igni is pretty pointless, it barely does enough damage to break his shield.

There are several youtube videos on how to beat him, just beware of spoilers in the related videos. :)

I tried following your advice, but it didn't work at first. However, you set me on a path to the solution.

Long story short, Letho gets to do "free" damage against me no matter what using Aard. I can't parry it. I can't dodge it since it's instantaneous.

I was under the impression that I am supposed to damage him way faster than I am currently able to. That's why I came here for help.
Basically :
- He always kills me in less than 3 minutes no matter what because there is no way to evade or parry his Aard attacks.
- I can't damage him significantly in less than 3 minutes.

I watched some videos of the fight, and I am unable to replicate them because my sword is way slower than what I see. I am wondering if Letho can be killed at all when wielding the Espadon? Does anyone have any experience killing him using that sword?

EDIT : It turns out that this was the issue. The Espadon is just too slow of a sword to kill him. Its rythm of attacks doesn't work with Letho at all.

I ended up going back and crafting the Jagged blade, and after a few retries, I was finally able to kill him with it, especially thanks to its faster rythm of attacks.

Thanks for your advice!

Just to add to your solution, when I finally took him down, I'd found that in the first second of combat I could attack him straight away before he had a chance to cast the shield spell, and just hammer him with a bunch of heavy attacks & ignis before rolling away. He was already down to about 60% health after that initial attack.

Lots of rolling and a couple of cheap sword attacks and ignis later, and his health was low enough for the game to continue.

When he has his shield up, just dodge his attacks. You can avoid any damage, even if he throws something at you. Make sure you keep some larger distance!
When his shield is down try to stun him with Aard or Yrden, then attack.
He will recast his shield at that point, so just start dodging attacks again.

This is a good point to make. The Espadon is not a "witcher" sword; it's too heavy for Geralt to use in his standard witcher combat styles. Since Letho is a witcher himself, Geralt needs to be able to match his speed in combat, making it a true duel between witchers, using speed and finesse in their swordplay.

For others who are having trouble with Letho, I had good success against him using Aard. When Letho's Quen shield is down, hit him with Aard, then I think there's time for two strong sword strikes before he gets his guard back up. When he's shielded, avoid his attacks and consider casting a Quen shield of your own. A potion that speeds stamina recovery is very useful.

Wait for his shield to expire, set down the trap sign that paralyzes, go behind him and strike at his back (+25% damage, if you got the ability in prologue). He's so easy, sometimes the cutscene begins even when he is still on half his life bar.