I'm doing the final part of the Malena quest, fighting the bunch of Scoyatel near the waterfall (on hard) and I'm in the exact OP's situation. The targeting system isn't very good when you're fighting piles of enemies, often Geralt will jump in the middle of the crowd before you can do anything to prevent it, But it's still a beautiful game, I absolutely love the woods around Flotsam, man how long I waiited for a game like this one :)

hmm..

For gameplay changes, you can try the following; this really makes the game more dynamic. Use both of the below mentioned mods, as they work in Tandem. One without the other is not worth it.

Better Combat Mod -> http://www.witchernexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=44
Equipment Overhaul -> http://www.witchernexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=89
Then change game difficulty to HARD

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I also found the below set of mods to enhance my UI's for all in-game MENU's.

Panel Tweaks -> http://www.witchernexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=87
HUD tweaks -> http://witchernexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=132 (one without the combat crosshair is the required one)

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After completing the game some 7 times (restarting the game from Prologue), with all the possible branch endings. I am playing the game again currently with the above modifications and am liking it... ;)

I think that avoiding button mashing will mostly prevent this from happening. An extra tap of the button will sometimes send him off in an unexpected direction.

yup, I figured that out ;) It's just that the combat system is so akin to arcade button mashers one gets carried away sometimes (the other game I'm playing on my XBox is Castlevania Lords Of Shadow and there your life depends on how fast you can mash the buttons, lol)

And the annoying part is that it happens so fast. You can click on an opponent and in 0.5 seconds or so the target cursor has already jumped onto another opponent. That's why I mostly use strong attacks now - they are more likely to attack the one adjacent to you (not the one 10 feet away) and they can damage multiple enemies quite reliably.

But then you can't close the distance. Only swift attacks seem to do that. On the targeting, I don't know how else they could do it; in theory, it works. Swivel the camera and attack the new enemy, but unlike other games the enemies don't waste time coming at you, they all attack at once. What some people are claiming is a targeting issue is really an enemy AI issue imo. I need more time with the combat system to really figure it out.

Yes, I still use LMB when I need to close the distance (or just jump away from surrounding enemies) but once I'm close, I use RMB. This works even when you are kiting, because when they come within range, boom, strong attack, in their face - using LMB in this case might get me attacking at an enemy further behind, 2-3 hits -> staggered -> a few more hits and I'm down.

I'm not so sure it's an enemy AI issue. True the enemy is very aggressive but they act in a reasonable manner. They need to revise the algorithm they use for auto-targetting (maybe target a closest enemy + taking account the direction you are facing). They might be using the same algorithm now, but by the looks of it, it is too jumpy for my comfort.

I know it's not to everybody's tastes, but that's one reason I made the combat crosshair in the mod mentioned above. I'm not sure of what method the game uses exactly to determine your target, but the centre of your screen plus the direction Geralt is facing seems to be a big factor.

The crosshair is probably useless if somebody's using a controller, but I really found combat less aggravating that way rather than sort of passively looking for the target lock on, which is still a factor, but I felt I rarely got burned by it afterwards when using quick attacks. (On the swordsmanship path without any balance or combat mods on hard difficulty, I felt there were only a few fights in the entire game that seemed all that hard once you got to Flotsam, and that was even with an unupgraded Quen. Mostly just died to to randomly messing up and getting mobbed.)