I'm playing with PISE on Adept difficulty, I tried Master + PISE but enemies were one hitting me

I play on Apprentice, and still die regularly. My reflexes are very slow so moving/dodging during combat isn't really an option, either I stand there and take it or I die

Master difficulty, here. I don't currently use difficulty mods, though perhaps I should look into them to see what they do.

Currently I'm playing on Adept with Pluto's More Spawns plugin.