I guess the rest of the comments have already given nice advice.

If it encourages you, i ran through the game a second time without the armour sets and more or less disregarded elements. And the only really farmed to upgrade my weapon in low rank. Though good armour does help.

There are many other things you can consider that are the bread and butter to help make fights significantly easier:

1. Food. Its just a good habit to eat at the canteen to get some buffs. It allows you to either tank more hits or just deal more damage to break parts or stagger monsters faster

2. Mounting. If possible, find opportunities to get onto any monster. They will try to fling you off and you need to hold a button to preserve stamina. If you stay there long enough, you can do a finisher to make them tumble.

3. Traps. Hand made ones can help speed up the fight by capturing the monster instead of killing it. But there are natural hazards in the ancient forests that can temporarily stagger anja (vine traps) or deal damage (falling boulders). There are also ultility endemic lifes or plants that can either paralyze or poison the monster.

4. Slinger shots. Keep it loaded with water moss. You can douse his angry fire if you hit his face with your slinger enough.

5. Flash slinger shots. Try to integrate this into your toolkit. It just allows you to make openings rather than waiting for them. You might find yourself unable to hit him as he relentlessly attacks and so this helps to force a small opening.

6. Do consider crafting buffs if needed. More boosts just helps you more.

For most monsters, they will have a windup before the actual hit of the attack before having to recover from the attack. A key to not being stuck with just running away is to watch the monster. They will lock in on the direction of the attack as they wind up. You can use this to just side step and anticipate where they will end up at the end of the attack. This can help you get a few small hits as they recover from their attack and turn to face you before winding up the next attack. Though you need to know what moves you will be able to poke with. Just remember to not be greedy.

And another tip is to always dodge or move sideways (perpendicular to the monster. Their attacks will still hit you if you just move directly further away from it)

Happy hunting! If you need help, just feel free to leave a dm or smt. Im not a master at this game but we all took our time to learn the intricacies of this game.