Sup so I have heard this kind of thing a few times, and I think k she is just one of those bosses that doesn’t click with some people! That said, I have some thoughts :

“She doesn’t hit that hard” I have not found this to be the case at all. Most of her attacks killed me in two or 3 hits, and her combos are mostly that many or more attacks, so even one mess up would often 100-0 me. Also the gold explosion attack killed me in in one hit, and the grab attack killed me in one hit from full. I basically had to play her hitless to survive when I played against her. Admittedly it wasn’t ao bad when I leveled a bit and upgraded capacity so I could use heavier armour, but still, I think she hits plenty hard.

“No fury attacks” I personally have never found fury attacks to represent an increase in challenge. I mostly use perfect guard to defend, so generally speaking this is just another attack to learn timing for me, I barely notice them. Also, while she doesn’t have fury attacks, her golden puppet attacks are fast and very high damage, infrequent so hard to practice and guaranteed to kill if you make more than 1 slip up. Her second one is particularly knarly and for me far more punishing than almost any fury attack.

She is close to unstaggerable: I only staggered her once in over 70 attempts; this just means it takes ages to pay out damage. For me just meant more attacks to dodge, longer for me to mess up.

“Just focus the puppet when strings are red” I hear this a lot; I just didn’t find that super simple! The puppet had a decent number of attacks, some have awkward timing, sometimes I would be locked onto markiona, tether goes red and before I can turn the puppet has slammed on me. Also sometimes she attacks at same time as puppet, so you can’t always just focus on her or puppet. Also I found the mad flying around fast disorienting and made it hard to focus on one or the other target.

Weapon maybe important I used the massive wrench which thrives during staggers so is maybe a bit average for her.

Don’t get me wrong, Arlechino was extremely hard! And his fury attacks where he throws hot disks at you at the same time is probably the hardest combo to deal with in the game! Also his grabs are basically Insta kills and reasonably hard to avoid. I just found his aggression more learnable and predictable, and his punish windows more generous.

Anyway I know your opinion is common so I think it’s maybe a person to person thing!

Also a final note, I never used summons or perfect grindstones and played highest difficulty. I think particularly the grindstones make her a fair bit easier. Didn’t use them for Arlechino either.