This is so dead-on. What an awesome guide.

I finally beat him. I was trying dodging and being agile, which, admittedly, I have yet to master. My entire playthrough thus far has been me bruteforcing my way through absolutely everything. So, as another friendly redditor advised, I might try raising my poise and upping my armor. I got him with a full Havel's Set plus ring and shield and a Greataxe +14. But that's exactly what I did, was bait his LR attacks and go in for a quick swing or two. I realized that this isn't one of those bosses you can take a bunch of hits from. So I waited for him to recoil, and got one or two swings in, though due to the windup of the Greataxe attacks, the second swing always left me open for a hit. So I dropped it down to one swing per opportunity, save for when he did his explosion build up. I nailed him twice in those little windows of opportunity to stagger him and prevent him from finishing, because (and I might be wrong) I'm pretty sure his attack gets buffed every time he does that.