I don't feel like j.D needs to be the most rewarding parry like it was in CS1. Comboability would be nice, however. What I'd rather see instead is for parries to have better proration so that they have more corner presence and so that the option to use meter on them for more damage is there. It pretty much (generally) feels like when I spend meter on parries, all I've done is gotten rid of stars that I'm not getting back.
Has 4C ever been FC...? I feel like FC would be strange for it given that it has such poor proration anyway.
Haku's astral will pretty much never be practical if we're talking realistically since it is so easy to bait out and punish. If you are playing people who become overly cautious when you have 8 stars, then you should probably be taking advantage of that and going on the offensive instead of fishing for a parry.