Once you finish the DLC and go back to the main game the difficulty level change is pretty much a joke. The DLC enemies and bosses are brutally difficult, with the exception of Boss 1, who is a really fun battle but definitely not crushing. Optional boss and boss 2 are beefy motherfuckers. NG+ bosses are a joke compared to the care I took in fighting Drakeblood Knights.
Optional boss on NG+ was so fucking hard for me :lol holy hell. I just circled them around until one dropped into the water after killing Cerah, then backstabbed Alvaninja for a nice chunk.
By the way I don't know if its been mentioned here but you can absolutely stagger Sanctum Knights. Equip the stone ring, and all UGS attacks will stagger them, including staggering them out of their attacks. I imagine Great hammers will stagger as well.
They do not have infinite poise, just very high poise. Regular 2h R1s with a Crypt Blacksword absolutely wrecks them with Stone Ring on.
And for me at least, the necessary trick to killing Drakeblood Knights is the fw+R1 bash. Timing is key, but if you interrupt their attack you get a nice opening. If you do more than 50% of their HP you'll get a big stagger and a good chance at finishing them off. With a stone ring you can probably stagger with heavy weapons like Sanctum Knights, but I'm rolling with a stabby build using Leo Ring. Stone Ring didn't really improve my ability to stagger them with rapiers.
Lastly, DBKs cannot be parried at all from what I can tell. I wasn't getting any parry attempts with Espada's R2, so I tried the Throne Watcher shield, which will ring like a bell if an attack can be parried, but it wasn't ringing at all, just making the standard shield crash sound. Makes me think the two best methods for killing DBKs are backstabs (hard to get for me considering they attack relentlessly with sweeping attacks and you never can predict how many hits they'll combo), or the stagger bash as mentioned above.
