^^No that's not what I meant, I'm talking about circle strafing which instantly puts you behind the enemy so that you can do a crtical strike from behind, I've seen people do it during the E3 demo and some of the guide vids I've seen on youtube.It was really fast, something you can't do by just pulling the sticks and pressing B, I have no idea what it is.
You can do that with slow enemies, there's a trick. You run straight at the enemy, pass him, turn 180 and attack. Again only works on slow enemies and is risky, u might eat a sword blade. This is done alot on pvp and mostly by lag exploiters. It's not a reliable tactic. Your best bet is to dodge and block, i pretty much only parried the black knights throughout the game. It took me 30 mins to learn their attack timings, now i can parry them everytime they try to attack me. The only reason i did this was my character was too weak to fight them.
Bosses are extremely easy. Infact with most bosses, initially i would advise a double handed approach, dodge thier attacks. Early on, your shield isn't going to soak much damage for you. Dodge the gargoyles attack, run and give him 3 hits and back off. Try to kill the gargoyle quick so ur not overwhelmed by both of them. If you're facing problems, go human and summon a phantom or so. Even if ur playing online u can summon an npc phantoms, Solaire. He'll distract the enemy enough for u to get in hits easily.