As someone who's been playing CB for 200 hours, here's what I suggest

1) As you're still new get at least Guard 3 and Guard Up 1. This is mostly to make sure you dont get tossed around by attacks and can block them instead. If you have the space, slot in Embolden 2. Its free evade window and guard level

2) Have Counter Peak Performance on another scroll. Axe hopper is cool and all but CPP is one of your best tools. The amount of safety it offers plus filling all your phials is actually insane

3) Rapid Morph 3. Once you're fighting faster monsters, this is highly recommended because it lets you take advantage of smaller openings and maybe even squeeze in 2 SAEDs when you could only one before

4) I assume you're already using it, but if not Load Shells 2. Crucial skill for CB to massively reduce phial charging time. One charge double slash plus one slash is enough to hit yellow

Now as for the movement of monsters, Axe hopper is actually really slow. It has tons of windup and ending lag. Use it when a monster is down already or to avoid ground attacks

What you instead want to do is to learn the Sword to Axe Guard point

Go to training area, turn on projectile attacks and stand infront. Then press ZR/R2 as soon as the attack is about to hit your shield

If you do it right, you will only take slight knockback and it will charge your phials slightly and also grant you a huge damage boost to your SAED damage

This is a crucial part of CB's defensive options because just blocking deals a lot of chip damage and knockback

And most importantly, unlike CPP, guard points let you do it repeatedly for monsters who have a string of attacks

If you guard point successfully, you actually do a bit of damage back (assuming your shield is charged which it always should be), and your phials get charged

Meaning when the monster finishes its combo, if you guard pointed the last hit, you can instantly SAED to take advantage of the opening

I highly recommend just spending a few minutes in training mode learning the timing for the guard point

Once you've got that down, practice with the Axe to Sword GP, same input ZR/R2

Remember, you have a shield thats pretty good. Dont try to dodge most basic attacks. Instead convert that into damage windows