Nice!
I have my own thoughts on parry and for me it depends on the situation. Against bosses like Warrick, parrying can trivialize most of the encounter. But, vs mobs it is almost useless as it is better to override their actions with your own. Bothering to get the timing right on the parry isnt worth it when you can swing your sword once and kill them. Too much opportunity cost for me.
Made a post about a different take on parrying if you wanna give it a read, @Chemile0n also already linked it: Suggestion: More dynamic parrying through different parry types
It can work for practicing bosses etc. But, I do think it is a bandaid solution, right. Since you are farming XP against weaker enemies and practice combat to be stronger against lvl appropriate enemies. If you then defeat those the exact same will happen again. You don’t get better but your character is higher level and stronger, if that makes sense.
Getting better at combat is also knowing what to parry, dodge, move away from or just ignore and attack. Also ensuring to weave runes into your attacks is a solid plan. Especially, if you want to do a parry build, since parrying restores focus. So rune attacks are sort of your riposte. You only have to manually use it.
The reason I say this is because the crucible will also be overwhelming for the first time. You might fight 2 strong enemies with high poise defense who charge at you. Make sure to have AOE and specific runes to deal with them. The throw rune, insanely powerful, highly recommended on any melee weapon.