they made poise weaker by having it so that you need both a heavy weapon AND a high poise stat to get your super armor . before you just needed the weapon and you would super armor through everything that wasn ' t a guaranteed stagger . the net effect was that builds that use slower weapons now also have to invest heavily into vitality to be able to hit dudes without being staggered assuming they even can hit them with how cheap rolling is while the dudes using faster weapons still run around in rags because poise still does absolutely nothing for themyes I know stuff like the POISE COLOSSUS exists , but the thing is before the poise update , it wouldn ' t need three pieces of havel ' s set and the black iron helm to be able to poise through things . the only good things about the poise update is that the poise frames on weapons were made to start earlier , and 2 H hammers got poise frames too . the changes to poise itself just made it worse overall .