I still havent learned dodge offset
It pretty much just means that if you're doing a combo and you think an attack is coming your way, hold down the button to "pause" your current combo, and dodge the attack with the button still held down. Then after your dodge, you can continue your combo instead of starting all over again.
Say you're doing a Punch - Kick - Punch combo with the standard 4 guns, where the third punch is the wicked weave (giant hair thing) attack in your combo. If you went punch > kick and then saw a monster looking like it's about to attack you, then instead of letting go of kick to get ready to dodge, you hold down the kick button so that Bayonetta keeps keeps shooting in the middle of her kick move. Then when the attack comes, dodge the attack while kick is still held down, then press punch after the dodge. You'll do the wicked weave part of the punch as if you just did punch > kick > punch, except you just "paused" your combo for a second to dodge the attack.
This makes comboing incredibly safe because holding down a button (with most weapons anyway, since some weapons can't be held down for too long) is just as safe as standing back doing nothing while you wait for the enemy to do an attack.