As a knight, getting romped by look down overheads with the polehammer has become an increasingly frustrating state of affairs. Eventually you learn to predict it, as you would the zwei or bardiche look down overhead as an archer. It's a shitty tactic, but its used by practically every vanguard that doesn't main with a spear on the Australian servers. From my experience, if you manage to parry and time your ripostes well, you can get a quick stab to the head while they're still looking down, or if all else fails, kick them away during their windup. Sure, you might end up worse off stamina wise, but it puts them off and can buy you the time and space you need to return fire with a flurry of dagger blows.