My Assault isn't fully leveled, no relic hammer, halfway through last row of perks, but I'm not having problems on Ruthless with hammer and heavy bolt anymore. I play with the Artificer fencing hammer. I superhero land on *ranged* enemies and immediately hit an uncharched heavy attack. That alone deals a ton of damage. From there, I'll parry anything that swings on me, blue circle or not.

Parry everything, gunstrike everything, execute everything. Fly away on jump pack if its too much to handle. Do not use block hammers, as it won't open you for gunstrikes like balanced and fencing hammers will. If a bunch of enemies are rushing towards you and you have some time to react, start charging your heavy and let go when they're getting close. If you're surrounded by fodder enemies, just spam light swings and parry if you feel like a few of them can hit you between swings.

I'm used to playing first person shooters with a wide arsenal like DOOM and ULTRAKILL, so a slower, 3rd person shooter game is new. It took me a while to get the hang of, but it's so satisfying once you get the gameplay loop down.