I've played throughout on Death March (all except Blood and Wine, which I haven't yet started because I have not remotely enjoyed my time with the game solely because the gameplay has been such a negative) and tried a variety of builds, starting with a Sign Build and re-speccing into an Alchemy and Sword build (around level 18) because of how ineffective signs are in general.
My argument, as it has been throughout the thread (admittedly I've only made a few posts), is not the bolded but that the gameplay is highly flawed throughout (particularly how it was designed) and drags down what would be an otherwise enjoyable game into something which is tedious and frustrating.
One of the aspects which make the gameplay frustrating is that there are design decisions which contribute to making it a laborious process. In particular, the broken levelling system (where signs are comparatively useless at a higher level because of how signs scale with intensity, sword results in Whirl which stun locks enemies and is the highest damage you can output in the game, and Alchemy is so absurdly broken it turns you into an indestructible tank) and the decision to tie signs to a single cooldown timer rather than individual timers (which funnily has a much bigger impact at lower levels where Quen is so dominant and the signs are more useful) actively discourage experimentation. There have been multiple posters in the thread who have made the accusation that using quen is 'ruining the game on yourself' and suggesting that the OP should instead try alchemy because suddenly makes the combat more interesting, and a few of my posts have been in direct response to these claims; they overlook completely overlook how the broken nature of these aspects (although there is an irony to the one individual in particular who suggested going with Alchemy instead of just using Quen when that makes the game an even bigger exercise in tedium) is a significant issue with the gameplay and contribute to it feeling tedious.
There are other aspects of the game's design which contribute to making the gameplay unsatisfying to some people; these aspects include (but aren't limited to) how poorly Geralt controls when in and out of combat, the armour/weapon system breaking down to which Witcher Gear set you choose disincentivising you from collecting loot, the quest designs highlighting negative aspects of the game's design (over-reliance upon Witcher Sense making the quests feel repetitive, highlighting the poor movement with the horse racing, highlighting how problematic the basic combat is in the fist fights which breakdown into a game of 'parry, attack, parry, attack, parry, attack', and highlighting how poor the shooting is with the Skellige points of interest), how the combat 'feels' (this is certainly a lot more individual), and the map's points of interest being highly repetitive (the question marks rarely rewarding you with the 'good' aspects of the game, i.e. well-written quests or interesting characters; at least those which extend beyond the simplistic style of 'read this note from this person and find this hidden item mentioned in the note'). For every good hour of content, there is for me at least five hours of totally subpar gameplay (I've highlighted in a previous post how to me the thought of going back to play Blood and Wine is like facing going to work at a dull and soul-draining job for eight hours to be eventually rewarded briefly with what's actually good). Some of these I'm not very interested in as they've been well-talked about in the thread thus far. What I am interested in though (and take issue with) are the people who have suggested (as mentioned) that the OP is just 'playing the game wrong', because the game's design is a contributing factor to how the OP is playing it.
-[my post is quite long so that's the main 'part', from this point to avoid lengthening my posts to absurd degrees I'm going to stick solely to these things rather than including the below bit]-
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On slightly less relevant points (which are designed more to address your rebuttals to what I previously posted and is more of a continuation of how certain aspects are broken) :
I am skeptical that you tried Whirl much if your experience was as you've stated, because Whirl stun locks human enemies it hits so it is exceptionally rare for a (non-ranged) attack to get through even if you jump into a group of enemies at a higher level than you (see:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E69ZeEH5HTA for a quick example; it does use alchemy to survive the attacks but the core of the gameplay highlighted simply relies upon Whirl). You can tank hits with Alchemy (more of an issue when there are ranged attacks), but Whirl keeps the enemies largely unable to even attack and rips through defences. It is absolutely broken in its efficiency and is the highest (consistent) DPS you can get in the game. At this point combat just becomes a rush of how quickly you can get through it. Rather ironically, EndlessFlood above who posted a video to try and highlight how 'good' the combat is does mostly the same thing throughout (post
#720).
Quen absorbs a single hit, but when you die in typically two to five hits against equally levelled opponents that's a substantial additional amount of life provided. Of course you can use things like bombs to assist in the combat, but the core aspect of the combat is still going to be dodging, casting Quen, attacking during an opening, and dodging. If you don't manage to stun every enemy when involved in a group (particularly when there are enemies who can close distance, like Nekkers, or can disregard that such as archers) there is rarely an occasion when you're best served by resetting the cool down using anything except Quen because if you're attacked you're nearly dead. The enemies have enough life that using (for example) Igni and getting a single hit in is not as useful as ensuring you don't die (whereas with another sign, you could) and just getting a hit in anyway.
The game on a higher difficulty (and at a lower level) encourages a defensive play style simply because of how substantial a single additional hit from Quen is. This is when the single cooldown timer is even more detrimental to how combat is in the game, because it's at lower levels where Signs is actually most viable (because the best abilities are in the first two tiers, and Igni with a high sign intensity early does decent damage against the low-health opponents and also has good crowd control this early; whereas Alchemy and Sword become broken in the third tier). On a lower difficulty there's little point in exploring additional options because mashing attack will get you through reasonably well and anything else is just drawing it out. At a higher level the issues with the upgrade paths become more blatant and the combat becomes more tedious because there's never any fear of dying (unless you're purposely dragging things out); there's no skill needed to get through encounters making them unengaging and unrewarding because of how little mechanical skill is in the combat system, there's little to vary it (because signs become useless comparatively, the oils are just a damage buff if you've upgraded it and if you've not upgraded it it takes longer to continuously apply them than to just go through the encounter, bombs only are useful as a delay as their damage is minimal if not upgraded [and even then] but why do you need a delay when you can slaughter enemies anyway, and the less said about the crossbow the better), and there's little responsiveness in the combat to make experimentation fun (because you're just chipping away at a health block and there's nothing else there).
Particularly when you initially stated "This is so wrong but is also what I see come up the most. I think that it's a particular problem for the Witcher 3 because it's a game that allows you to play poorly and yet, through attrition of dodging and getting those 1-2 hits in, still eventually succeed" I think you are one of those people who are writing off flawed elements of the gameplay as people 'playing poorly' when you have to outright sabotage your own ability to not have the gameplay be mindless.
*This also largely neglects Gourmet (which the OP has stated they use), which provides life continuously for twenty minutes whenever you eat food which makes dying even less likely at the lower levels when paired with Quen and trivialises the combat on even the highest difficulty by so substantially adding to your survivability.
