God I hated that bitch.  I'm too old to memorize animations and react to them.  I so just wanted to spam her to death.  I probably tried 100 different gear setups and failed all of them and quit for a month.

I've heard that you must discipline yourself to "hit just once" and then you will pay more attention to reacting to the animations and then you will learn them.  But I never learned them.  I'm too old and too in-my-head to be the fast-twitch sensory reactor necessary to excel at this kind of game.

But I'm nothing if not determined, and so by luck eventually one of my many attempts worked. 

 Whatever stories i hear about Malenia they all boil down to basically this story. Go in, fail often, change random things to min/max. Still fail. Tear hair from head. Question life decisions. Randomly do it. 

 In order of difficult for me:   Malenia blade of Miquella,  Twin Gargoyles in Siofra Aquaduct,  Malaketh the Black Blade,  Radahn and Elden Beast maybe tie for fourth I'm not sure.

Ridiculously easy:  Ser Gideon Ofnir the All-Knowing,  Renalla Queen of the Full Moon.  Both killed first time without even knowing how they fight.