There are many things in Dark Souls 3 that have annoyed the community in recent months: the overpowered Dark Sword (which was recently nerfed), phantom range on several weapons and more. However, none of those come even close to the debacle that is the game's "poise" stat.
For what it's worth, the Dark Souls series has made a name for itself by being particularly punishing on those brave enough to play any of the entries in the series. In fact, developer From Software has appeared to make it a habit to explain as little as possible about the game over the years, often leaving it to the community to figure out how things as simple as basic game mechanics work.
The latest casualty of this habit was the "poise" stat, much to the chagrin of longtime players. In previous entries, poise dictated a character's ability to withstand a hit without staggering. Simply put, the heavier the armor, the more resistant you were to being staggered by enemy attacks.
However, after some testing, it became abundantly clear that, this time around, poise had no effect on staggering (or anything at all, for that matter) — a realization made even worse, considering that many items in the game are designed explicitly to increase it.
Instead of poise working as players expected, it turned out to be something like this:
Of course, there's nothing wrong with changing the way poise works — changes like that are expected as the series moves forward. The problem is that From Software has yet to actually explain what those changes entail. Even worse, back in May, when questioned about the changes, From Software stated that poise was working "as intended," which still didn't answer the all-important question: what does poise actually do?
Well, series director Hidetaka Miyazaki has finally chimed in on the subject, but don't get too excited: he didn't reveal what poise does. Instead, he addressed concerns about his studio's lack of communication about the stat.
"This isn't something we are particularly proud of," he said. "With how things are handled now, it can be improved and this is an agenda item we'll be working on in the future."
As you can see, this doesn't address the poise stat, but it does show that Bandai Namco and From Software might be aware of how frustrating their "explanations" have been in the past. With that knowledge, maybe they'll finally reveal what the deal with poise is — and if it's broken, fix it.
