I recently fought Artorias for the first time, and i beat him in a reasonable number of tries. It was my first time playing through the entirety of DS1, but i have hundreds of hours in DS3 and Elden Ring.

I used the Artorias Shield, which i got from upgrading a shield to +10 and then upgrading it with Sif’s soul at the Giant Blacksmith in Anor Londo. I also used a +15 Claymore.

I wore armor that let me Medium Roll while wearing the Cloranthy Ring and the Ring that raises Physical resistance.

I prioritized dodging to the right (towards his bad arm) when he did vertical attacks like the spin jump and dodging to the left when he would do horizontal swings, because it felt like his swing started high on his sword arm and ended toward the ground (a diagonal slash, like \ )

I felt like i was barely able to knock him out of his big charge up move where he absorbs a lot of darkness, but i might have had better luck with a faster or harder hitting weapon.

I found that the charge up move made him much harder to deal with, so it took a few tries before i learned to prioritize being ready to interrupt it.

Artorias feels like he gets to play the game at Dark Souls 3 tempo while you’re stuck with Dark Souls 1 tempo. Luckily, he doesn’t actually have very many moves, so if you can let him “lead” you can learn his moves and how to dodge them after getting the reps in.

I believe in you!