I have no idea what kind of AI you are playing against but I "literally" get CC'd the seconds either of my armors drops. Unfortunately like 50% of the skills in this game just happen to have some sort of CC built into them.
It really is kind of an awkward system that needs some reworking. They really need to just give every skill a % chance of success and just double it when armor is gone or something of the sort.
For instance battle stomp would have a base chance of knocking someone down of like 33% with armor and without armor that number jumps to 66%. That's what I would try anyway. I don't think CC should ever be 100% with the exception of a few select abilities.
I'm not sure that idea is all the way to a solution, but it does seem like a relatively simple and compelling to avoid the all-or-nothing issue of having no armor while still making having armor remaining important.
I think this possibility might bear exploring.
