You can use gamepad and keyboard inputs at the same time, but it does cause tool tip flickering because the UI elements such as hotbar & interaction glyphs are different.

Previously I found that if you use gamepad movement combined with mouse, then you will get movement-based directional attacks, which will swing your melee weapon in the direction that you are facing/moving. This is opposed to KB&M control, where you will always attack in the direction that the camera is pointing.

I noticed today that alternatively, you can use the Right Trigger binding, instead of LMB, and that makes it so that even using WASD to move, it will attack in the facing direction instead of camera direction. This is currently what I am doing, because it doesn't cause tooltip or hotbar flickering, but it does give the movement-based directional melee attacks. It is only 8 directional attacks as opposed to full analog, but it still feels kind of nice for melee.

Lastly to note, blocking using LT or RMB will always point your character towards the camera, so you can override the movement based directional attack by holding that.