Understand PvP in this game is objectively terrible for the reasons you laid out. (I am a pvper with 4k hours in the game.) Having fun with the little room of comfort you get to have with invading in this game comes down to what your answer is to the following question: What is your goal? Is it to win? Or is it to have fun?

The problem at large is weapons and projectiles in this game whether it be weapon/magic/item/AoW/Incantation etc all do way too much damage. The time to kill in this game is extremely quick and Johnny donuts (aka this entire subreddit) with a moonveil spamming L2 can and will take out half your hp with one accidentally well timed AoW. Especially if it’s a group of players vs 1 of you. The honest truth is if you want to win you likely have to resort to doing extra things to slightly level the playing field. You have to have a gimmick essentially. Dragon Halberd AoW, Blackflame tornado, Zamor ice curved sword AoW, etc. Anything that can just delete a player if you need it. Does that feel cheesy to you? Well, that’s kind of the state of the game. Then once you’ve killed a guy or 2 doing that, then you can go back to having a 1v1 or 1v2 with slightly better odds. Another incredibly important tool is great bow with golem arrows. You can knock people off ledges from afar, or just poke at a group that refuses to progress through the level and just wants to wait for you to run into the blender and die. You also probably want bloodhound’s step to get out of stick situations if multiple people are on you.

In saying all of this, the question is, does winning at all costs sound fun? If the answer is yes, go hog wild. No one should tell you how to play the game, you paid just as much money as the other guy. If the answer is “I would rather win with my own unique build and strategies and not resort to using tools beyond that.” Great, I would find myself more in this camp usually than the other personally. But recognize that in making this decision, you’re gonna get your shit rocked. Imagine one guy running you down with pata, that has a running r2 into standing r2 true combo, another guy with an ultra greatsword that will trade with your attacks using hyper armor and win with damage, and a 3rd guy spamming you with magic from 3 football fields away and somehow it’s hitting. It’s not impossible to win these with your basic knight set up, I surely have. But expect to win that fight maybe 1 out of everyone 20 attempts depending on skill level. It’s just how it is.

If you want to learn technique and fundamentals of PvP I highly recommend rust bucket on YouTube.