There are a few cases where enemies ignore stagger entirely. Some are kind of annoying, while others seem downright wrong.
The mobs which dodge attacks a lot will take no stagger damage mid dodge. Since these are generally weak, it doesn’t bother me too much.
The elite which has a massively long hammer annoys me the most. During its grab wind up, it takes no stagger damage. So you might have him close to stagger and be wailing on him, expecting to stagger but instead you get grabbed.
Warrick the Torn boss, specifically the pestilence version, has multiple times stopped taking stagger damage. This happens often during his transition before he screams and adds plague damage to his weapon. This transition can entirely reset his stagger which sucks. I’ve seen it as well before he decides to hop into the air.
I don’t think enemies should ever become immune to stagger damage.
Echo Knight is another where it’s pretty much impossible to reasonably stagger the boss unless you completely build for it by stacking granites on quick 1H swords/maces and specificially using high stagger runes.
The fact parry does not build the stagger bar seems just wrong.
Yeah he has a huge stagger meter. He is rarely immune to stagger though. I stagger him 4-5 times a fight with my attack speed stagger build. He is the only boss left that can put up a fight.
I’ve noticed instances where enemies seem immune to stagger effects too, which is likely by design; I assume there’s some mechanics for enemies to prevent being spammed with staggering attacks. The solution isn’t to get rid of stagger immunity, which in itself is a solution for a different issue.
But I do believe there could be ways to make this mechanic less frustrating and confusing; I think implementing some sort of indication for enemies when they activate their anti-stagger state could make it clear in battle that you failed to stagger the enemy because they’re not supposed to be staggered and not because you suck or because the game is broken.
In my experience what I most commonly see in other games with a similar mechanic is a sort of white blink in the model of the characters; I’ve also seen red particles that flash for a second, things like that… brief visual effects that communicate that there’s a reason for your staggering attacks to not make the target flinch.
This makes me think “oops. I screwed” instead of “wtf is going on with my attacks???”
It would feel like its by design if it was more prevalent. Stagger immunity is rare, which makes it feel less like a design, and more like a work around or oversight - i.e. if we allow stagger during this state, it could create problems so we disable it. I see the dodging enemies as a prime example. Not having to handle stagger means the dodge can fully complete - simply calculate destination, interpolate current position with destination, and play an animation. With stagger in the mix, you have to stop the interpolation and cancel the animation. Certainly possible, but there may be more going on than that so it might have been easier to not handle it. Or perhaps they have a framework for handling stagger, and these dodging moves are outside it, and including it in that framework may not have been straight forward.