Gehrman, The First Hunter is wrecking my shit over and over again, forcing me to farm blood vials and causing my blood pressure to spike over and over. I'm somehow unable to determine any of his parry windows, his combos all do 9/10ths of my health and any time I would want even a little respite he appears next to me and spikes me across the map. It can't be Insight, I've spent myself down to 1, so I can only assume that I'm maximum shit or I'm missing something majorly.
Here - I'll actually answer your question since this thread has degenerated into BB is hard/No it isn't! bickering. Equip a pistol and clawmark/Blood Rapture rune. Forget you can do anything but shoot and do visceral attacks. It's time to become zen.
Stay roughly outside his maximum melee range. On his shoulder mounted charge attack wait for it to go through and shoot him on the backswing. He'll engage his second attack directly into the shot and become ripostable. On his quick overhead strike, do the same. Wait for his attack to go through and fire. His second attack will once again stun him. If he attempts to pull you, dodge to the left if you're too close then dodge forward and he'll miss his entire combo. If you're positioned correctly, he'll wiff the pull and move into his short ranged follow up that can be easily parried at no risk.
For his second phase just stay at the same range and dodge either left or right on his melee combos. You can parry these attacks but it's risky so I don't recommend it. Occasionally he'll roll directly towards you - when he does, shoot him immediately. He'll end his roll directly into your shot and become ripostable again. Once in awhile he'll cut his roll short and shoot you in the face. Just dodge to the left or right once you recover if he's close. Otherwise, shoot him and he'll become stunned again.
At roughly 40% he'll stare into the moon and glow. He'll gain the ability to stand still and then explode for lethal damage. Simply run away once he losses interest in you. His scythe stance gains an attack where he'll rapidly fly toward you and attempt to land a strong but slow physical overhead attack. Dodge to the left or right. You can parry him out of this attack but it's risky and the follow up will one shot you. His blade and gun phase gains an attack where he fires a solid round. This would normally be a very bad thing as it stuns you and renders you susceptible to riposte but since you've been keeping a safe distance (You have been keeping a safe distance, right?) you'll recover before he has a chance to gut you.
I too was having problems with this boss until I realized that I had spent the entire game doing the same thing regardless of what a mob did. It was time to learn to respond to a boss for once. I went from being unable to land even a single hit to being able to do the entire encounter with nothing but blood bullets in a little less than an hour. Just watch and respond. He's not so bad.
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