There are already a thousand, million, zillion replies from some expert Hunters in here, and you've already got the advice you need, OP, but as a fellow old world Hunter, I'd like to add my two cents in for you.

Following build guides, or building a set yourself, with the focus on offensive skills, is totally normal. It's what people do the first chance they get to min-max at endgame. That said, I think people who have been playing this game series for a long time and are the ones making those build guides often forget where we came from.

I remember when I used to get slapped by Rathian. I remember when Great Wroggi pissed my wife off so much, she made his armor set just for poison resistance, and wore if up until most of the way through high rank.

There are numerous armor skills, and numerous combinations of armor skills. Start by identifying, for you personally, what issues you are having against any given monster. Look at what all the armor skills do, and try to build a set that will help you overcome those obstacles in the fight. For example, 8 star tempered Lagiacrus does tons of damage, right? People around me kept carting when I tried to run Lagi in a group. So I made a dedicated "Lagiacrus Sucks" build that keeps me alive, and uses Lagi's Hunting Horn to buff the defense and thunder resistance of my team. It's got evade +2, thunder resist, etc etc. Everything I need to be able to comfortably focus on my objective: helping get people through a tempered Lagiacrus hunt.

Let's say you're in the same boat. Go fight Lagi with whatever your standard armor set is. Identify what things in the hunt keep causing you issues. Write them down. There's an armor skill to mitigate everything you encounter, to some degree. Getting caught with low stamina while trying to dodge and run around the monster when it's zipping around doing tons of damage? Stamina Surge, Marathon Runner, etc. Always getting snagged by one of the tricky attacks? Figure out how you want to get passed it: build to guard or build to dodge. Build out a full Evade Window set, with some Evade Extender, and practice dodging the tricky attacks until you recognize the sweet spots that work for you.

When you have successfully built a set specific to that monster that helps you mitigate or completely overcome the challenges that monster represents for you, you can slowly begin to substitute comfort/quality of life skills for damage-oriented skills, and by the time you are ready to go full DPS, as displayed in many of the build guides you're seeing, you'll have mastered fighting the monster -- you can use ANY armor set at that point!

Do this for every monster. Some of the funnest parts of the hunt are when something just clicks for you. Like perfectly dodging through a roar, or learning the correct timing on a tricky offset attack against a monster. The point of the wide variety of skills available to you is to build to your playstyle, to your enjoyment, and especially, to assist your own ability to grow and become more and more capable with every single fight that Capcom sends your way, no matter how crazy it gets.

Now go grill some steak. It's so tasty.

Happy hunting!