Highlights

Weekend Warfront: Scurvy Dogs

The seas run with blood! Dwarf ironclads, streaming out of Barak Varr, carry legions or blood-mad Slayers to raid and plunder the enemy's ships and ports. Meanwhile, Orc sea-hulks, loaded with Choppa freebooters, have ambushed the Dwarfs in the Black Gulf, and the sea is choked with the carcasses of the dead!

Shiver me timbers and call me matey, prepare to set sail on the high seas of bonus renown and experience for participating in the scenario, The Ironclad! Also, you may notice that you're pillaging more booty when participating in the Weekend Warfront in the form of +50% XP and Renown. So get out there, keel haul those Scurvy Dogs and let your enemies know that you are, without a doubt, on a boat!

YAAARRRRR!!!

Completing all tasks grants the title "The Dread Pirate".

Realm versus Realm

Fortresses

- Fort lord HP now scales with attacker population. At 168 attackers it remains the same as before, and with fewer attacks will scale down to 50% of the current max.

- Fort lords now have hostile auras that increase aggro generation by 50% for players of their hated race. (Dwarves hate Greenskins, High Elves hate Dark Elves, Empire hates Chaos.) This mechanic existed before the new ability system, and is now restored with a visible icon so players can see it.

Fort Lord Mechanics

All Fortress Lords now have actual mechanics again, which will force attackers to do more than simply hit a lord in the face, and will give defenders more options to fight back and protect their fortress. The restored and new mechanics are:

Greenskin and Dwarf
Each Lord will spawn a Keg (Dwarf) or Banner (Greenskin) on the lower floor of the fort. While this object is alive, the boss cannot be damaged, so attackers must take - and hold - the bottom floor to destroy the object. This object spawns starting at 90% Lord HP, and respawns every 10% after.

This mechanic is primarily a DPS-focused mechanic, and also requires attackers to divide up their forces.

Empire and Dark Elf
New Mechanic for Healers: At 90% HP, the attacking realm spawns a friendly Lord NPC in the Lord Room that will stop the enemy Lord from gaining bonus powers. When the enemy boss takes damage, your friendly Lord also takes 60% of that damage. Healers must consistently focus on healing both their warband and the Friendly Lord.

If the Friendly Lord falls below specific HP thresholds, the enemy Fort Lord will gradually gain more powerful buffs. Those buffs are:

- Friendly Lord at 80% HP: Enemy Lord Incoming Damage Reduced by 25%

- Friendly Lord at 60% HP: Enemy Lord Incoming Damage Reduced by 50%

- Friendly Lord at 40% HP: Enemy Lord Incoming Damage Reduced by 50%, Outgoing Damage increased by 25%

- Friendly Lord at 20% HP Or less: Enemy Lord Incoming Damage Reduced by 50%, Outgoing increased by 50%

Because the friendly lord takes damage based on damage that hits the Enemy Lord, it is possible to slow DPS on the enemy Lord to balance these scales. This is primarily a Healing-focused mechanic, with DPS players also able to impact the rate.

High Elf and Chaos
At 90% HP, the boss spawns in a Hero mob with significant health to aid them. When this Hero is near the boss, the Lord gains a 50% raw damage output buff.

This mechanic is primarily a Tank-focused proximity mechanic, but Aggro reduction in general (including on DPS and Healers) can have big impact here. Attackers can have this Hero aggro'd on whoever they like, but eating the 50% damage increase will give the Lord a much higher chance of wiping entire groups, giving defenders a chance to push in with Morales and retake the Lord Room.

Keeps

- Keep Lords now also scale their HP based on the active population in a zone. Their max HP is the same as before today's patch, and during low population, can scale down to 50% of the existing Health Pool.

This change was almost universally approved by our RvR Focus Groups some months back, and it makes sense: hitting a tank Lord for 25 minutes during lower population times isn't really fun for anyone, so this change should improve that significantly.

- Keep Upgraders are now working once again.

Combat and Careers

General Changes and Fixes

- The three offensive crit stats from renown (Opportunist, Focused Power, and Sure Shot) are combined into one speccable stat, giving the same amount of crit per investment to each offensive crit. The name remains “Opportunist”. Focused Power & Sure Shot remain in-game for now, but will be removed at a later date and all saved builds will be updated to use Opportunist instead.

"The offensive crit chances have been combined to offer more flexibility for Shadow Warriors and Squig Herders, allowing them to seamlessly switch between melee and ranged combat."

- Guile (Heal Debuff Weapon Proc) – The duration of the heal debuff effect has been reduced from 10 seconds to 7 seconds. This change ensures that powerful tools like AoE heal debuffs remain primarily within class kits, rather than being overly reliant on gear procs. By shortening the uptime, we aim to maintain balance while still allowing Guile to complement class abilities effectively.

- Flee - No longer functions as a toggle ability. Cooldown increased to 40s so the effective cooldown remains the same. The morale-reducing effect is moved from Flee to Panic effect.

- RP’s Oath Rune of Power and other abilities that proc on next attack (such as Ere We Go!) now only trigger on one target.

Target Cap Test Results

After careful evaluation, we’ve concluded the test of the 9-target cap and made the decision to revert back to the 24-target cap.

We initially reduced the target cap to 9 to explore how it could improve gameplay, particularly in reducing zerging and giving smaller groups more opportunities to compete. The 9-target limit did bring some advantages, such as tanks being able to absorb more damage and providing a more manageable Time to Kill (TTK). However, we also heard from many of you that it introduced challenges for smaller warbands who couldn’t benefit as much from these changes.

After considering your valuable feedback, we’ve decided to return to the 24-target cap, which many players felt offered more flexibility and balance in large-scale encounters. We’re grateful to everyone who participated in the test and shared their thoughts with us. Your insights are essential to shaping the best possible gameplay experience, and we look forward to working with you on future improvements!

Initiative & Weapon Skill Rebalancing

We’ve made some important adjustments to Initiative and Weapon Skill in order to address two major issues and provide a more balanced experience across all classes.

- Weapon Skill's addition to Parry has been reduced from 3% to 0% per 100 Weapon Skill.
- Weapon Skill now grants 0.5% block strikethrough per 100 Weapon Skill.
- Initiative now grants 5% reduced chance to be critically hit per 100 Initiative, as well as 3% parry.
- The base chance to be critically hit has been increased by 5% (from 20% to 25%).

Why these changes?

Weapon Skill was unique in providing both strong offensive and defensive capabilities, which made it by far the most valuable stat to invest in. Meanwhile, Initiative was a weak choice, as it wasn’t competitive with other defensive stats like Toughness, and its buffs and debuffs were underwhelming.

To resolve this, we’ve shifted the parry bonus from Weapon Skill to Initiative. This way, Initiative now offers meaningful defensive value while Weapon Skill maintains its role as a potent offensive stat. As a result, players will have more balanced choices depending on their playstyle, and both stats will have clear roles.

What does this mean for you?

In some cases, Initiative may now offer more damage mitigation than Toughness, while in other cases Toughness will still be a better choice. This creates a more dynamic decision-making process when optimizing your character's defenses, giving you flexibility based on the situation at hand.

It’s important to note that while physical damage classes need to invest in two stats (for damage and defense) compared to one for magical damage classes, physical damage classes also have ways to gain armor penetration that helps compensate for this. But this discrepancy is something we will look into balancing longer term.

What’s next?

We believe this rebalancing improves the overall value of Initiative without diminishing the importance of Weapon Skill. This is just one step toward making more stats relevant and ensuring that your build choices feel impactful. Your feedback is key as we continue refining the game, and we’re excited to see how these changes play out in the coming weeks.

Thank you for your ongoing support!

Click below to see a before/after screenshot of the changes!