Programmer for the game here. Just to eek out a bit more info, do you know what your Brawn stat was at for that section? Trying to gauge if it's a matter of your Brawn stat making it harder or some other issue going on.
During the fight with Elise it doesn't matter how high my brawn is, the gauge doesn't increase. The highest (armor included) is at least 17.
With the clutchmates there is a bit of a difference, but it didn't change the outcome. By this point by including armor collected I had at least 30 brawn.
So I don't know if the stat is low for these points in the story or if the requirments for completing that particular QTE are just ridiculously high.