I believe it was way worse on release, or i simply got too good in couple years...

Shadow of The Erdtree is much tougher, sadly both DLCs got nerfed slightly

Anyways...

I feel like Neowiz wanted to put LoP game mechanics on a stress test, and then the DLC happened.
Unfortunately, the game's biggest issue seems to lie within "How do i make the player ♥♥♥♥ up the Perfect parry?"

It was fine for me until I reached the guardian of the ruins. Now I'm just struggling against the usual ♥♥♥♥ souls camera and a boss who has way too much HP, making the whole fight a chore to learn. I'm about to give up at this point, maybe I'm getting too old for this. There's nothing like spending 5 mins chipping the health of a spastic boss only to get killed by one combo that is nearly impossible to parry unless we die to it 5 times.

That's pretty common among Soulslike DLC, they expect you to tackle it once you're pretty high level.

Originally posted by Roman von Ungern-Sternberg:

Shadow of The Erdtree is much tougher, sadly both DLCs got nerfed slightly

Erdtree was barely nerfed, it makes little diff in grand sheme of things. The bosses are fine except Arlecinno in my opinion, he's way too op. I've no idea if it's NG+ or smg but nameless puppet is a joke compared to him. I was doing the rematches for badges just now and killed lvl5 nameless on my first try didn't even use half of my heals lol. Even Markiona is harder tbh, the amount of hp is excessive in DLC bosses - that's where the issue lies and dmg is too much too in some cases, though it's manageable in all except that final boss.