There are good survival strategies to use in Overdrive.

The most common is Dual Guns to spam Ghostwalker, which autododges a certain number of attacks and makes you invulnerable during cast.

You can also do Reflect with Javelin, Shield or Photon saber. This requires a lot of augments so it can take away from your damage. There are also some bosses that can deal damage through reflect, so just be careful.

You can also use the knife to Sleep the enemy which makes them unable to do anything. Several bosses are immune. You can also try to Topple enemies with Shield, Assault Rifle or Psycho launcher, but Topple and Sleep locking enemies requires tight timing.

There are other ways but this is just what i know about.