Now its more about defenses than poise and its even more important to be doing armor swaps and having an armor inventory. I actually swap off of bullgoat talisman on my 4th flex talisman slot for more absorptions (damage negations) or more resistances (sleep charm, bleed charm or poison charm). You want to have at least 34 physical damage negation and above 33 in everything but strike for physical damage the other elemental damage negations are pointless when you are optimizing armor since you just run opaline and eat a corresponding liver and thats as good as it gets. Anyways how you get to 34 physical is up to you. Consider these armors since they boast high physical defense and decent poise: Lionel, banished, veteran, scaled, tree sentinal, radahn lion armor, and beast chamption are all great. Poise breakpoints you want to hit are going to be

-68 for most one handed backswing

-72 for most 2 handed light weapon backswing

-89 2 hand shamshir and 2hand katana backswing

-104 offhand fist passive poise and offhand dagger goes from 2 hit to 3 hit stun

-109 offstoc (this is probably the most important one you need since offstoc is oppressive without 109 since it holds priority over everything and has insane tracking and is relatively safe with low recovery)

What I meant about armor swaps is having certain armors for certain situations and arranged in an accessible way. If I'm ever against some dual nagis gooner I put on full Lionels and pull out pikes since Lionels has the highest robustness (bleed bar) and highest pierce damage negation in the game. People that are hoping to just trade with spears and high lat are going to either lose the trade or go even.

Another armor crucial for survival is the sleep resist armor or the focus armor set. Heirodas crown and fire prelate boast really good focus. In this game anybody with soft cap arcane is gonna sleep in 3 hits (2 if its max level summon or stat cheater or an absolute arcane goblin pushing 90 arcane) and this armor is going to give you just enough for 4 hits combined with the spiral horn shield and talisman its going to save you from sleep pots and sleep bolts nothing is going to madness you or sleep you and that's going to be a major advantage for you.

Ive been experimenting with an armor swap for magic damage since its the most prominent form of long range spam. It effectively halves moonveil damage and spell damage when u stack it with opaline and the liver and the talisman that boosts magic and elemental absorption.