Strange posture breaking

The posture system has been confusing me at times. I’ve been rocking a greathammer and heavy armour, so I rock up to fights with a lot of poise, however I find that on occasion my character gets staggered for an inordinately long time. I’ll get smacked by something big, and be flinched and get a short temp-stun, and I get that, they broke past my poise. But then on occasion I’ll be stunned for significantly longer and my character just ignores all input. Recovery also seems to be faster if you mash an action like dodge or block, to early cancel the stun animation? does anyone else have the same problem? is this intended game design?

I feel like if there are two different states relying on your poise stat (flinch vs stunned) then we need a poise points meter so we know when we are close to being stunned, instead of it being a nasty suprise.

It’s like you said, there’s two kinds of stagger. A flinch vs full posture broken. I don’t have the setting on so I’m not sure if it shows your stagger, but I’ve seen other people with the stagger bar for enemies shown. Maybe there’s one for the player too.