The game says "You need swords and signs" for normal. Bull fucking shit.

I've never gotten Letho to half vitality and I've tried to kill this guy like 20 times. I've tried using Swallow. Using Tiara. Etc. Etc.

TWENTY.

he hits for more when I'm blocking than I hit for. Every time I land a blow, he hits me back (maybe I block, but see previous point about blocking.) His igni does 40 damage. Mine does 13 (before damage reduction.) He has like 300 vitality. I have like 150.

I admire CD projects attempt to make this challenging, but the reason you have "hard" and "insane" and any other difficultly level above normal is to make it hard. Normal is for people who don't mind repeating a boss fight 3 or 4 times. Easy is for people who don't want to thing about it.

You must stun him and hack at his back...Yeah he is very difficult

Maybe you just need to re-adjust your thinking of where you fall in the easy to insane scale. There's no shame in it.

Don't start over! Just change the difficulty in the game options. Try using throwing daggers to lower Lethos health. And remember use Quen to shield yourself! Letho uses Quen too, and just like yours, his shields only last for 35ish seconds too.

Actually the explanation kinda says it all.

I used Yrden, roll and strong attack against him and the tactic worked fine. In fact I used this tactic for all the big bad monsters (etc arachas, endrega queens, draugs). :)

I died on him several times, but like most enemies in TW2 you only need to figure out the tactic that works.

For Letho use Aard to stun him, then attack his back. Roll constantly when away from him to avoid bombs and his own Aard use.

I also recommend using Aradd or whatever when he charges. It doesn't stun him, but it stops the charging attack and gives you a moment to breath if you have Swallow.

Use Yrden, Quen, and bombs, and watch his movement...learn when to dodge and parry. He's not as difficult as he might seem.

Yeah, you can adjust your difficulty on the fly, no need to start over.

Also, you only need to get him to half health to defeat him, so if you are getting in that ballpark, you are almost home.

If you do a search for "letho" you'll find a bunch of other threads that have good tips for beating him. There are a couple in the first couple pages of the forum, like this one further down this page:

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/the_witcher_2/spoiler_letho_fight_please_help/page1

I believe you meant Quen :)

I had a massive topic about this myself a while ago. I'll post what I used to defeat Letho, because he is a total prick and we can all agree on that haha.

If you can use throwing knives then for the love of god do that, because those things are massively overpowered and his health drops like Dandelion's pants in a brothel!

I couldn't do that (no points in dagger throwing) so this is what I did:

During the conversation with Iorveth, tell him you have something to do first, then run up to the Roses area, but just before you get there meditate and drink a swallow potion and the other one to resist fire/poison and the 10% damage one, and apply a brown oil if u can during the actual fight.

The key to the fight for me was to get the first attack in. As soon as the fight starts, before he swings or casts Quen, hit him with Aard and then use Ligh/Heavy/Heavy strikes to hit him. As soon as you hear a 'chink' cast Aard again, and repeat. Don't run or give him a chance to breath when doing this, be very very aggressive.

Back away and concentrate on dodging until you have recharged your abilities and cast Quen yourself, then once his Quen releases hit him with the Aard/Ligh/Heavy/Heavy strikes again.

If you can use throwing knives, then as I said do it. It makes the fight so much easier, but aggressively applying the technique I mentioned there should bring victory, and you'll feel all the better for it.

It took me about fifteen seconds and six grapeshot bombs.

Just wait until his quen sign is down and spam bombs. Playing on normal btw.

Haha yes I do, thanks!