Playing survival for the first time in Master, is the only way to have success is to cheese the game?

I haven’t played this game in forever and got it on my Switch so it can be my go-to portable game. I decided to do survival mode because I love the immersion of sleeping at night, eating and cooking, etc, otherwise the game becomes “fast travel-talk-fast travel-clear dungeon-fast travel” etc.

I’m finding though, the battles are insanely difficult. Not in the sense I’m just stuck and can’t play, but in the sense I just have to cheese the game.

Like have them agro my companion, land a hit, jump on a ledge, watch them run, jump off the ledge, land a hit, jump back up, etc. Taking a single hit from anyone but a low level enemy nearly instantly kills me, even when blocking.

I settled on a 2H weapon and heavy armor build, but the blocking does nothing, and I frequently get the instant death animation when I near 50% of my health.

I CAN make the game work by cheesing it, but is that how it’s meant to be played on this difficulty or do I essentially just need to level up correctly to make tanking hits and blocking viable?