Everything wrong with the 03/04/26 Patch

[leftayparxoun]

I had really wished there would not be a need for me to make such a post but, alas, it is extremely important that such a post is made.
The title is not an exaggeration or meant to be clickbait; this patch is in my opinion truly disastrous.

If you are a ROR dev and are reading this, then I plead you to not roll your eyes and ignore it; I am usually verbose and polite in my forum posts but this time around the situation necessitates that I speak in cold, hard truths that you NEED to hear. If this posts leads to me being suspended from the forums or to my relations with the ROR devteam worsening, then so be it.

YOU NEED TO LISTEN AND LISTEN WELL


Everything wrong with the 03/04/2026 Patch:

1. Before I even begin to talk about the itemization changes, I'd like to address the problem with the RvR Lockout System. While this patch introduced a way to allow for people/warbands/guilds to balance the orvr lakes around by swapping without any lockout restrictions, it also introduced the incomprehensible change that the reward debuff (that took the place of the previous lockout) for whatever reason refreshes itself!

To make it a bit more obvious on why that change is really bad, let's see how a warband that actually WANTS to balance the lakes is treated in the old and new system:

• Old System: That warband has to most likely spend upwards of one hour locked in the same side even if they realize that them or other wbs logging in that side have made the lakes very unbalanced. That + the time spent to reform on the opposite side once the lockout expires can make up the majority of the playtime of an organized warband (most run for 2-3 hours) which leads to very unfulfilling gameplay.

• New System: That warband can swap to the losing/outnumbered side at any point, but regardless of when they swap they will be excluded from any rewards on the other side regardless of when they join it (immediately after playing in orvr or even after having fought for over 2 hours there).

On the one hand this allows warbands/guilds that are fully done with their gearing and are mostly playing for the shake of fighting to swap at any point to balance lakes, on the other hand it punishes ANY OTHER kind of warband that swaps by taking away their rewards.

Newsflash: the former kind of warband/guild is NEARLY EXTINCT. LNM is the last full wb of its kind and even they have been slowly burnt out of the game.
The game is bleeding veteran players like crazy and then this change comes along to (checks notes...) make sure that people who are still gearing are disincentivized from balancing the lakes? What is the logic here? Do you want to promote PvD even more?

A nonsensical change in my eyes


2. ITEMIZATION ISSUES. Where to even begin here...

2.1 The wiki is not up to date. There are errors in the wiki (such as the wDps scalars) and there is a huge portion of information missing that was promised in the Itemization announcement forum post and within the wiki page itself. Namely: Rounding, Stat Cost tables of Procs' & Passives Tiers, the REASONING behind the Stat Costs for the various stats, the Google Sheet for calculations and more.

2.2 Undocumented Changes. Tons of them. The patch was supposed to adjust weapons. Instead we got weapons, actual Gear pieces, Set Bonuses for sets and even Talisman reitemizations. "Which ones?" you might ask me now. Heck if I know. I have only found SOME that I will be listing now but there could potentially be a ton more that have slipped by and I was unable to notice*

• Shoulders + Helmets from the T2 Epic Quests

• Genesis set bonuses

• LOTD 2pc sets set bonuses (but not the defensive cloak+jewelry set for some reason)

• A lot of Tome Unlock sets' set bonuses (e.g. Winds Impervious)

• 3rd Slot Jewelry talismans' values

NONE of the above was included in the patchnotes and there could be even more stuff that was stealthchanged. A complete failure in terms of documentation.
And if you think this was bad, wait until you find out that the changes on Set Bonuses for the above also DO NOT EVEN MATCH the values predicted by the formulas provided by the wiki? What is going on?

2.3 Automation of changes. This is the largest point I want to make but let me preface this by saying that I UNDERSTAND why you'd have to use a script to automate the process of stat re-balancing on over 40k items, however it seems that very little effort was put into that reitemization script/algorithm since the results it produced suffer from 5 EXTREMELY important issues:


2.3.1 LACK OF GOAL-STAT PROGRESSION:
This simply refers to how the script (and/or the reviewers, if any) did not properly understand that itemization in ROR gravitates around certain Goal-Stats. By goal stats I am simply refering to the main focus stats that make or break certain classes, specs or builds.
A good example is heal crit% for Zealot healers. As most people will tell you, heal crit% is EXTREMELY important for that class due to their strongest tactic requiring direct heal crits to proc itself.
By that logic, one would expect that the strongest weapons in the game, which by ilvl will be Fortress, rr61 scenario weapons and after this patch also Darkpromise weapons, will naturally have the highest heal crit% for those classses.

Well, you'd be very wrong:


The lvl 27 weapons that drop from the Orc Capital's PQ bags have higher crit than the supposed strongest weapon tier in the game, which is a whopping 39 ilvl higher than them. SURE, the stats they offer are less, but most builds don't care that much about Stat Total but about Goal-Stats.

For a similar example, a tank that is nearly softcapping both WOU and TOU will not sweat minor stats like a bit of +1 AP/s or +1% reduced chance to be crit (rctbc) and will instead choose the option with the highest avoidances%:


The stat readjustments that were performed clearly did not account for any sort of actual application of the stats for in-game builds.
I would not fault anyone for calling it a vibe-based re-itemization patch.


2.3.2 PROC OVEREVALUATION:
EVERY SINGLE weapon proc in the game currently has a stat cost of 40 a.k.a. Strong (there might be cases where that's not true but from my calculations that was not the case in any item I manually checked). At first I thought that had to be a bug, but I did manage to find examples of procs whose cost was 20 (Moderate)
I can't believe I'm saying this but, thanks to the ninja changes on T2 Epic Quest rewards (e.g. https://killboard.returnofreckoning.com/item/593) whose procs were adjusted (nerfed), we can figure out that EVERY proc they now have is worth 20 stat points (Moderate).

This indicates to me that ALL "ProcName II" procs are treated as Moderate (20), while all weapon procs, which happen to be "ProcName V" or higher are Strong (40). By process of elimination, ONLY "ProcName I" procs will be treated as Weak (10 stat points worth), but as far as I'm aware there aren't any of them in game.

This is absurd on multiple levels, but especially from the angle we've already talked about; even though certain V+ procs got buffed, they are by NO means worth their 40 stat costs if examined under the scope of actual builds or Goal-Stats. The main reason is not because they are weak, but because they are completely unreliable.

Here's some examples of such procs


The combination of extremely low/unreliable proc chance together with meager positive value if they do proc make these procs effectively useless in the eyes of most players. Even if their "costs" have been set to 40, most players would be happy to ditch them and get 10 stats back.

This issue is especially prominent in the comparison of high ilvl weapons with and without procs. By all means, Fortress weapons should outperform their predecessors and yet due to the useless proc attached to them and to the general squishing of gear gap between early 40 and endgame weapons (result of the new formulas), we get that Besieger Weapons have more stats that Fortress ones:


Sure, that's not a fair comparison for dps classes, but it is for classes who do not care about wDps like Healers and Tanks.

The vast majority of procs is just useless and has clearly only been adjusted numerically and not with gameplay/builds in mind.
This is also exacerbated by the fact that some of the few GOOD procs (that should be worth 40 stats) did get nerfed in this patch.
As an example, the reactionary procs most commonly found in BB/Crypt Inf weapons were toned down from 10% to 5% of each avoidance:
https://i.imgur.com/4QAZa3c.png

That DOES make sense on one hand since for example you could gain only ~4% parry for 40 stats and now you gain 5% parry and dodge and disrupt with the (situational) proc.
One the other hand, this makes NO sense because of the...


2.3.3 PARTIAL ADJUSTMENT OF PROCS:
By that I am referring to the fact that ONLY the weapon procs were adjusted in this patch, leaving procs from gear set bonuses unchanged.
For example, why would people wanna run the above weapon with reactionary VI if they could run 4pc Triumphant for a better proc?


Sure, the issue of 9999 crests is here but similar issues pop up with WOU procs and even if we were to exclude procs from set bonuses, due to the fact that weapon procs do NOT stack with abilities, they are in many cases rendered useless.
"Why get a +75 WOU proc weapon if I can do +50 from my abilities alone?"
"Why would I want to increase my armor by +457 if I can do +580 from my abilities alone?"


2.3.4 LACK OF REVIEWING:
It is evident that for all the above reasons, the output of the re-itemization script was not reviewed by the Balance Team and perhaps by no one at all.
If I didn't know better, I'd dismiss the weapon gearing system as "AI-generated" if I saw it in a new MMO.
The overall lack of intentional decisions on weapon stats is clear in my eyes and is a HUGE LETDOWN for me.
Not only does it show unprofessional-ism but it also indicates that there is either a large management issue (between the Itemization and the Balance dev teams) or showcases extreme lack of forethought and game-understanding by the balance team itself (if they had a hand in this).

In my mind it seems INCONCEIVABLE that a balance team that would be allowed to review the Itemization changes of this patch, would decide to give the OK to it.


2.3.5 UNDOING UNDERLYING MMO SYSTEMS:
This is a culmination of all the above points.
What the current version of the weapon re-itemization has achieved is to disrupt the gearing progression for many classes:

• Tanks get BIS/pre-BIS weapons from lvl 15 Dungeons and BIS shields from PvE dungeons. This means that can COMPLETELY disregard RvR weapons.

• Healers get their BIS weapons from either lvl 25 PQ bags or in other cases they just have to spend 10 genesis tokens to grab Besieger weapons that outclass the Fortress ones.

• Dps classes that factor in wDps in their abilities still go for Bloodlord weapons (since the passive is THAT good) but for their second slot you see WACKY BIS items such as random Purple Weapon drops from champs+ in HV or even T4 RvR Influence reward weapons ffs.

The latter are also potentially unobtainable for players who have for whatever reason already deleted them, meaning that you could be lockout out of BIS due to a random decision you made 5 years ago.

ABSURD

If you don't believe me, here's some comparisons:


By underlying MMO systems I am refering to the gearing process here, running parralel to the ward system. Why should BIS weapons stop at early T4 or even pre-T4 when gear are progressing normally? Should we expect similarly nonsensical changes to gearsets once they are the subject of the itemization rework?

Perhaps more importantly, this also enhances the issue of BIS items coming PvE in a PvP-centric game (with tanks now basically needing to do LV for their BIS Shields and 2h weapons).
Speaking of, who in their right mind decided that the ilvl of Darkpromise weapons should be increased by 5 (to ensure that they are BIS basically in a lot of cases)?

Like, heart-to-heart talk here; What was the idea behind this decision? Do you ACTUALLY want to force people to do PvE in this PvP MMO? Is that the trajectory the project is headed? This is not a rhetorical question. Me and a lot more people would love to have the answer to it so as to be able to decide how much more time we should keep devoting to ROR. I would greatly appreciate if a (lead) dev could stand up and explain to all of us WHY PvE items keep becoming BIS?

Seriously, what the heck is going on?

...

2.4 Item Deletions + Future Item unavailability.
I already talked about Influence items that suddenly became BIS for some builds being potentially unavailable to certain characters, but I'd also like to address the fact that we got unannounced Item deletions again. Here's an example.
The last similar case happened back in the 22/10/2025 Patch where Blast Potions and Tacky Bombs were deleted from the game overnight. That specific change even resulted in Guild Vault bugs. Despite repeatedly asking for the reasons behind that decision, no answer has been given thus far.

Besides ninja item deletions, we also now have the announcement that

- In the following patch (May 2026), the vendors for the Smuggler weapons, Imperator armor, and Overlord armor will be permanently retired. Though these items are now a relic of days long gone, this is your last chance to purchase them if you so desire to.

Considering how Imperator and Overlord items will apparently remain in game but will just become unavailable after the May patch, we are looking at a repeat of the situation behind the Skaven Event Rings from waaaaay back in the day. For those unaware, there are certain BIS rings (e.g. for 2h tanks) that were available ONLY during an Event around 10+ years ago and have since remained in the game.
Here's one I own for example:


Removing the Imperator/Overlord vendors while keeping the items ingame is just asking for a repeat of this situation.
Why you would be making this mistake again, 10 years later, is also beyond me.

Is there a reason those items need to be removed from vendors? Hell, is there a reason to keep the actual items in game if you are gonna discontinue the vendors? Just delete them in that case.
And before people say "But Only, these items will forever be useless" firstly, you don't know that, it can always change with new gear/balance changes being introduced into the game, and secondly, with AA Haste becoming so costly, having the option to get AA Haste in pieces where they would otherwise not be available might end up being useful.

Overall this change is just making me wanna spend 200x4 = 800 crests per character I own JUST FOR THE POSSIBILITY that those items might eventually come up in the future. Why? Just why?


And now for the final section:


3. Uncertainty, Negativity, Lack of transparency.

Let me first say that this is probably the worst ROR patch I've come to experience since I restarted playing in 2022. Perhaps it's a close second to the August 22nd 2024 patch where the infamous INI-WS changes went through. A really funny coincidence is that I happened to provide several warning about the then upcoming changes of that patch in an extensive post of mine, both then and for this patch.
In both cases I'd say my suggestions were ignored. In the case of the 22.08.24 patch, 2 months or so later we ended up getting the notorious strikethrough-cap system to fix the issues introduced by the WS-INI changes.
This parallel does not necessarily fill me with optimism about the potential resolution of the issues raised in this post, but this post had to be made regardless.

I mention "Uncertainty" in the title of this section because from ALL the people I've ended up talking with since this patch went live, this is the general outlook on all things itemization-related.

People are AFRAID to buy sets and weapons because they have no idea what the future holds (Will weapons be changed again in a week? Who knows!) and are especially reluctant to spend anything since this patch introduced zero (0) refunds for no-longer usable weapons (unlike the WS tali refund from the WS-INI patch). And as mentioned in my previous post this week, rolling things out in small batches is not helping anyone. And while I DO understand the fact that you may not be able to deploy those changes on the dev-PTS and then take them back before the next update is rolled out, maybe you should have considered the case of updating all item in an Excel file and once weapons, Jewelries, Gear, etc are all done to them port the Excel into the game.
Rolling out just the weapons is an extremely questionable decision to say the least. I do want to keep repeating that point in case you at least decide that that would be the proper approach for the remaining items (rolling them out together).

Negativity is in the title because, as I mentioned earlier, a lot of the changes seem vibe-based or done just for the shake of doing something. People (rightfully) cannot discern any sort of proper plan within the itemization changes performed in this patch and this is in turn transforming into a lack of confidence for the skills/decision making-capabilities of whoever is deciding things.

Speaking of whoever is in charge; who is deciding things? We got the formulas themselves but we have yet to hear anything about the reasoning behind them. This, combined with the lack of comprehensive change-logs regarding reworked items (see section 2.2) keeps on reinforcing the average players' lack of trust towards the dev team...


Elaborating on all the aforementioned things would help a ton with easing player worries in case there actually is a detailed plan (which got somehow derailed).
In my personal opinion, if an actual company was the one launching this patch, heads would end up rolling for whoever was behind some of these changes/decisions. Due to the nature of this server, however, there is no need to punish anyone as long as people are held accountable internally. You don't need to issue any letters of apology, because as long as you can realize where you've "done goofed" and what has to be done to fix things and regain players' trust, it should hopefully be good enough to get itemization back on track.

That is the purpose of this post anyway...

Please and thank you,

[IrkulixAenDeith]

I genuinely admire the amount of time you put into this, especially considering how hopeless the whole issue is.

[Keula]

EVERY SINGLE weapon proc in the game currently has a stat cost of 40

That's not true, there are plenty of 20 cost ones, fortress charms with their spike procs that you posted a picture of, are Tier B, easily verifiable looking at the stats, 33+12+20+20(crit)+20(proc)=105, while Concussion VII is Tier A and results in 23+8+14+20(crit)+40(proc)=105.

40 cost ones are the instant dmg ones(yea I don't know why either), bloodlord which at least makes sense, darkpromise morale gain on heal and probably some 2h procs which i haven't looked. But like hots/dots, barrier, pilfer that stuff is 20. And yes I agree procs shouldn't cost what they currently do and should be way less like 5/10-15/15-20 for the "tiers"(or screw tiers all together and put a value on each proc individually, still lower than they currently are ofc), bloodlord could be exception and cost more than the highest tier, and then remove useless procs cause spike on a healer is worth 0.

Stats point costs in general are kinda whack mainly crit/anti-crit and power/real stat being the same cost is really weird, D&D at 9 cost is an april fools joke, and the max allocation of points is very low and scaling is low as well as it's essentially 1 per iLVL~ish a bit lower in large ilvl ranges post 40.
Crit should cost 3-5 more, D&D 4-5 less, total allocation should be increased by like 0.5 per ilvl post 40, maybe even add some scaling so 50+ is 0.6 more, 60+ is 0.7 more or something like so there is some actual progression feeling.
Also some sort of scaling of the same stat multiplier of the cost should be a thing for the "premium" stats so an item with 3%parry or 3% crit would pay more per unit than 1% or 2% one.

[Sever1n]

I dunno what miracle should happen to devs actually answer your feedback and explain logic where they took something working and dont bothering anyone to turn it in pure chaos, instead fixing issues that suck life from people everyday. Feels like sabotage. Well atleast they fixed sc....

[Nameless]

Only real logic behind the patch is dev desire to introduce sov rarity weapons. So they bring all back down so new weapons are similar to old fortress weapons and are not so huge power creep. But still the way itemization is presented last patch is quite bizarre and wonky

[live4treasure]

Unfortunately I have to agree that the more time is spent within this new patch, the more it becomes apparent that whoever was in charge of the itemization rebalance spent absolutely no time doing anything but surface analysis.

Gear in the past, even though as stated was chaotic and all over the place, had a purpose. Item pieces would fill a specific purpose, for specific builds and were bis for specific classes. The patch however was a sweeping change to all items in the game with none of that purpose, nor deeper understanding visible.

I would also like to express my deepest regret that while I am usually an advocate for people being patient, writing suggestions and so on, the effort that went into this patch is purely a math based excel sheet-type project with no foresight, understanding of various builds or any real game knowledge. I'm sorry, but even though this is a completely free game with volunteer devs, if the result of your changes generates more problems than it solves, then you've somehow managed to create negative value for the project, because fixing this mess will take more time and energy from the team down the line and generate more vitriol from the community, than if you'd just done absolutely nothing and left it as it is. In short, the entire server community expressed their concerns and gave examples of ways of how you could do this itemization patch wrong, and you still did it wrong. In continuing with cold hard truths, the only word I have for this is incompetence, and no, the level of incompetence currently at play is not acceptable even for a volunteer unpaid dev in a completely free game.

Please roll the patch back, invite some players that are well-versed in the various nuanced aspects of the games mechanics and builds, re-review everything and roll it out only once EVERYTHING is ready to go. Please, be sensible.

[wonshot]

First of all, I admire the detailed response.

Second of all, as you mentioned and compared this patch to previous WS/Init patch and strikethrough.
As a member of the community, and not inside any inner circles. I can only go by official reasonings and speculations. But did these changes "need" to happen.

I understand the logic of progression, healers and tanks shouldnt use lvl 45 blue weapons at BiS endgame. It makes senses to adjust these situations so it matches the character growth.
I also think it makes sense to look at outdated unwanted Genesis piecees, thats good.
Alternatively attractive procs from Sentinel, for utility, cool!

But inflating itemlevel on pve dungeons, for players to show more interest in the dungeon manhours invested to re-create the dungeons just to avoid an other episode of Huntervale syndrom where people dont wanna go there, because theres not really much gearing reason. This mindset is kinda toxic. Bis pvp gear, should come from pvp, and it should be faster to get if you take more competitive fights (ranked, scenarios, city etc) and then casuals can catchup grind it in rvr or from tokens but at a slower pase.

The WS/ini patch, I could understand the logic of "we dont want WS to be the best offensive stat + defensive stat all in one" okay, that makes sense. But did it imrpove the game, to risk upsetting players and messing up the game for patches and months to come(?)

An other example and grudge I cant get over, is the proc situation.
We had a proc meta that was sorta solved in 2018. The same proc rules and bw/wp/sorc/dok procs were under control since then untill the modern proc approach patch happend. The result? SEVERAL patches nerfing, changing and adjusting procvalues, behavior and affecting solo performing builds because proc-providing classes suddenly became massively meta and overtuned so other aspects of the game got negatively affected too.

Why was this level of stubornness needed for procs, why do we need these massive itemmazation changes now(?)
Procs worked fine as per the 2018 solution, instead now solo sorc has less chance on Frozen Touch in ST timestamp, because warband bombsorc got overtuned. Thats silly! Was it worth upsetting the oldest destro greenskin guild to the point of quitting-ish by changing WS parry secondary, did the game get better doing that?

We can understand some of the changes, we can follow some of the logic. But some of these directions lately have been really hard to see why it is needed to touch on. Also, why is this happening in the middle of figuring out the overall Time To Kill in the game. Archtype patches are in the middle of getting rolled out, Tanks are done, Healers are done, Mdps are done... aaaaand lets change weapon meta, statweight, accesories and armor setbonuses, and then roll out RDPS. Either balancing team is involved in this one, which probably means rdps patch is delayed even further on this two year 4 step plan. Or they are not, and good luck figuring out what a magus timestamp rotation should look like in that patch with 4piece value, bloodlord and whatever else might change..

New player retention is a good focus, and it has been massively improved over the years. The scenario matchmaking was honestly nice, eventhough the community is not really embracing it much yet.
But overly logical changes like "you cant mount indoors" or hold the line behavior, or chanhing all stats in the middle of balancing roadmap.
Hello, is there a gamedirector involved. Wheres the red line, are the teams talking together and working together at all in the general direction of where RoR is headed..

If not, heres a freebie:

Finish the balancing, get lotd part 2 out, lets enjoy Tovl and Collosus.
Reintroduce the Campaign to the main replay loop.
Take a good focused look on RvR, zonelock mechanics, BOs, Keepsieges and wc locations.
World editing push. To keep new players and veterans engaged playing rvr, with new systems better zones and a fun campaign with sove weapons from city.
That should last 3-5 years when you sprinkle new live events, sc maps, balancing, community events, and random-event ideas from forums suggestions

[nocturnalguest]

"RoR doesnt deserve being taken seriously" (c)

Altho seriously i just advise to exploit it to the fullest, just let those org warbands roll with intruders 1h on rr80+ tanks. Cant you just game this system? You absolutely can. So a serious question, why you guys worry? There are so many mistakes done that we can finally have some great fun. Also there is 0 point to make so much efforts to post something, they will react only upon ingame actions being done. Just like they cut off anykind of cool fashion hammer items, they will just go with manually "fixing outliners" as they are exploited ingame.

I laughed then you mentioned "vibe-based reitemization". Thats indeed total incompetence like posters mention before, even for unpaid free project, i agree on this.

Everything you mentioned, ninja undocumented changes, dont follow their own declared rulesets, lack of review etc is nothing new. It has always been same thing.