The Tavern

Currently, when you cast Conjure Flame and there is a monster in range, the spell autotargets to the monster, although it is impossible to create a flame cloud directly on the monster. Also, this might be only my experience, but I usually want to place clouds close to me rather than next to the monsters (except in some cases like hydras). Also, if a monster is coming towards me and I want to put a cloud on all three tiles next to me in the monster's direction, the autotarget will be on me for the first 1~2 clouds and on the monster for the last one, which is confusing.
I think the autotarget should always be on the player, or on chokepoints if the devs are motivated.

LRD targeter was a million times better when it started on the nearest monster

Yes, because LRD deals direct damage using walls close to the monster, but that's not how CF works, so this targeting system doesn't really make sense here IMO.

This has been discussed before, and it turned out that it's pretty hard to find a better targeting system for Conjure Flame. While you are correct that Conjure Flame targets are empty squares, the current behaviour has one, huge advantage: it is predictable.

If you can come up with a system/procedure to set up better spots, I'll certainly listen.

The system suggested in the OP is to target the player by default.

I almost always want to cast conjure flame next to a monster.

Perhaps this is one of the places where the game could learn the player's intentions from observing how manual targeting is conducted.

But like I said: if you have specific ideas, please tell us. "Targeting is inconventient, improve it already!" will not do, because we don't know how.

I usually want to cast conjure flame between myself and a monster. So, could it target the monster and then move one tile towards the player, just like a monster moving to attack?

That would save me quite a few button presses. Possibly several hundred in a given game.

Target the next space the closest monster would walk to if it were walking towards you.

EDIT: Exactly like the guy above me said. I guess I should read the whole thread before replying.