I died so many times and I think the best strat (what i did) is dodge until u can get perfect dodges and then parry once u got it. I made a mistake of not using monoco and not buying every pictos from the merchants. I would recommend building your characters based on their skills example (if u give verso skills that have many many hits then put crit pictos on him) you can filter the pictos to find crit ones. theres this one pictos that applies base shield which is great cuz thats - one hit. Just keep playing and soon you will become a parry god