Adrenaline Rush
This archetype focuses heavily on survivability and Adrenaline generation, with the suggested best armor and weapons for it being the Bear School Witcher armor and swords that can be crafted and upgraded (complete the Bear School Gear Scavenger Hunt Quest to recover the diagrams for this equipment). You get two of the most powerful swords in the game in terms of steel and silver swords, and heavy armor to survive the physical damage you suffer from wading in for melee.
Critical Rend
This archetype focuses on maximizing the damage from Rend and from your critical hits in general. Rend is one of the most powerful melee moves at Geralt’s disposal, but it is not easy to land it consistently. To get the best chances to score critical hits, light armor is needed to make this build shine. The best light armor comes from diagrams of Cat School Witcher Gear (complete the Cat School Gear Scavenger Hunt Quest to recover the diagrams for this equipment). Light armor also helps with Stamina regeneration, a key factor in making this build work.
Bombadier
Sometimes you wish you had more bombs. This build provides for that very specific need. It takes a lot of work to hunt down the ingredients for this build to really work, but it is worth it. You will have more than enough bombs, and each bomb will be significantly more effective. Most encounters in the field should end decisively in your favor after many, many explosions.
Signing Survivalist
Survivability on the harder difficulty settings of Witcher 3: Wild Hunt can be tough even for the best players. Where on the Story and Sword! and Just the Story! settings, you want to juice up your attack power to kill quickly, on Blood and Broken Bones! and Death March! Mode, you want to lean towards survival. This build allows you to do that with rapid Sign use, combined with significantly faster Stamina regeneration. Heavy focus is placed on Yrden and Quen, with Igni providing your magical punch that can also weaken enemy defenses.