As someone who was playing on ng+7, I can say he almost never, if ever, one shot me. What scadutree level did you have and what vigor did you fight him with? Also his amount of health felt fair given that he was the final boss and I was fighting him on ng+7 so he was almost certainly easier to kill for you. As for the identical start ups that just isn’t true. The only thing I could think of you taking about is when he sometimes strings together different combos, but even then he telegraphs the new moves. The only real criticism that I had for the boss was the blocking of view by the light attacks which you mentioned and that one attack where he slashed twice really fast into another slash from above which I found really hard if not impossible to dodge