Posture & Stagger System

The Combat & Controls page describes posture and stagger qualitatively from tutorial footage; this page documents the exact constants behind that description, extracted directly from the client's posture_formulas and stagger_formulas tables. Your own Posture bar caps at 100 (PostureMax). Blocking a hit adds a flat 20 posture regardless of how hard the hit would have hit you (PostureOnBlock_Flat) - so chip damage from blocking many small hits fills your bar just as fast as blocking a handful of big ones. Posture damage dealt to you is bounded on both ends: a DealtSoftCap of 1.5x and DealtHardCap of 1.75x limit how much a single hit can pile onto your bar, while a ReceivedFloor of 0.5 guarantees at least 50% of a hit's posture damage always gets through, no matter how much reduction you've stacked - directly capping the ceiling of traits like Minotaur's Unyielding (-25% incoming posture damage).

Losing your posture bar entirely triggers the BlockBroken state (see Combat States): a full movement root lasting 1.2 seconds (BlockBrokenDuration), during which incoming damage is multiplied 1.5x (BlockBreakDamageMultiplier) - the single harshest punish window you can be caught in. Posture only starts regenerating after a 2-second delay with no hits taken (PostureRegenDelay), then climbs back at 5 points per second (PostureRegenRate) - roughly 20 seconds to refill from empty. Parrying works against you in the opposite direction: a successful parry credits back 50% of your posture bar (PostureRestoreOnParry) instead of adding to it, matching the tutorial's own framing that parrying 'lowers your posture instead of raising it.' Fully breaking an enemy's stagger, meanwhile, adds a 25% bonus damage window (PostureBreakDamageBonus) on top of the extended punish opportunity.

Enemy stagger runs on an entirely separate pool, sized by encounter class rather than a shared 100-point scale. Normal enemies carry a hidden single bar sized 30-75 HP depending on subtype (Fragile 30, Standard 50, Tanky 75); Elite enemies get a visible 150 HP bar; Mini-Boss encounters get 250 HP; Boss encounters get 400 HP; and Hard Boss encounters top out at 600 HP. Elite-and-above encounters all use 2 visible bars with a partial-stagger threshold at the 50% mark - hitting that midpoint briefly stuns the target for 1 second (PartialStaggerDuration), while fully draining the bar stuns for a full 2 seconds (FullStaggerDuration) and opens the true punish window.

How hard a given attack chips that stagger pool depends on its move class, not its raw damage: Ultimate abilities carry the highest stagger multiplier at 3x, Heavy attacks 2x, Abilities 1.5x, Light attacks the 1x baseline, Aerial attacks 0.75x, and Gap Closers the weakest at just 0.5x - confirming Gap Closer moves (tagged as such in the Attack Tags system) are built for repositioning, not for breaking an enemy's poise. Your baseline per-hit stagger damage also varies slightly by discipline: Weapon and Fighting Style both hit for 10 base stagger, while Magic sits lower at 8 - a small but real gap that rewards weapon/fighting-style builds specifically for stagger-focused fights. Stagger regenerates slowly if you stop pressuring an enemy: after a 2.5-second delay (StaggerRegenDelay) with no stagger damage dealt, it refills at just 0.15 per second (StaggerRegenRate), so sustained pressure - not burst alone - is what breaks tougher enemies.