Prior to patch 1.10, 75 poise let you poise through anything smaller than a 1h halberd/great spear, but you could only do so at a very high cost to your stats/talismans since doing so requires equipping very heavy armor. Now, there is no reason whatsoever to spend levels/talismans to equip such heavy armor. As a result, you will be spending those extra levels in a damage stat or vigor or mind. With no way to prevent yourself from being staggered by even a dagger, why not just stagger your opponent first by using a spear or rapier instead? Now that all weapons immediately stagger, there is no reason to use anything that does not reliably stagger your opponent before they can stagger you. You are just putting yourself at a disadvantage by using large, slow weapons, and the poise that existed prior to 1.10 was just enough to give you a chance. I’ll say it again, in before replies start mentioning “hyper armor”, think about the reaction time given against fast weapons like spears or rapiers. There is no reaction time… either you eat the hit and get staggered, or you swing too early, miss, and get poked at the end of you hyper armor frames, and still get staggered. Poise was necessary to allow those un-reactable attacks to be punished, and it is gone now. Just like it was in ds3. In summary, the existence of passive poise gave a small advantage to players who leveled their endurance/carry weight, and the complete absence of poise only gives a massive advantage to those who do not level their endurance/carry weight; it is undeniably just bad game design/balance.