Streeteh what was you party set up? And i seem to be getting my ass kicked by the named monsters even though I'm 5+ levels above them.
What am I doing wrong?
At that point my 'go to' group was Reyn, Sharla and Shulk. Later in the game things open up as characters become stronger. Reyn was all about drawing aggro, Sharla was healer and Shulk had to stand back and just keep building team attack/monado gauge using a suitable combo of normal and well placed side/back attack specials. The monado is essential for named monsters in order to survive special abilities and to keep 'speed' cast on Reyn to lower the overall damage he takes.
After some levelling Riki actually becomes a powerhouse, capable of stupid amounts of dps if you load him up with flame/freeze/poison/bleed attacks, he also has an excellent group healing ability and a huge amount of HP. Eventually i replaced Sharla with him.
Soon after the point you're at i replaced Reyn with Dunban. The reason i only did this after some time is that you need enough agility gems; when you give Dunban the max agility bonus (+50) using gems he's near untouchable. This means that the lowered healing output of your party by losing Sharla, an excellent healer (but rubbish at attacking) and replacing with the damage dealing but 'ok' healer Riki is offset by the fact that Dunban rarely takes damage. Basically Reyn used to need healing ALL the time, so i needed Sharla to keep him going, with Dunban it means less healing is needed so Riki could step in.
Much, much later in the game i then replaced Dunban with another character who didn't have quite as good agility as Dunban but deals more damage and can heal a bit too. I'm not going to say too much detail though as you haven't met that character yet
My dream team at the end of the game (beat it first time easily i must add!) was Shulk, Riki and the mystery character. They are epic together. Shulks Monado abilities are essential for any powerful character, Riki deals silly amounts of debuff damage and the third character had good evasion and good DPS to act as a 'tank'.
I never really got along with Melia, poor girl, though she is useful against Telethia.