Progression

[M0rw47h]

IMO having 3-5% total stat difference between Vanq to Sov is not bad gear progression "imbalance" - there is Invader inbetween as well, so a jump of 3-4% when gaining higher tier gear is allowed to get people interested in gaining more gear, instead of deciding "vanq is good enough" (conq/vanq is good enough for some of my Alts, even if I prefer mains to be in Sov/Inv).
Gear doesn't require some high skill level, for endgame gear you just need to be online at right times to leech forts or somehow have a sleep cycle that allows joining 3-9am servertime cities. (cities occur most at times when number of players online is at lowest, meaning least people defending against the campaign push).

The bigger stat imbalance lies with the armor rates
as you point out, Sov medium armor is 2840 armor, Sov light armor is 1420 and Sov heavy armor is 4260. All the armor costs same, but different classes gain vastly different product for handing in their Royals.
Is it fair? Maybe, maybe not, depends on your POV.
Everyone is stacking armor, everyone is stacking armor pen/ignores to melt armored targets. Healers with low armor melt faster than those with higher armor, and DPS with light armor melt faster than those with medium armor (+ extras like Mara attacker arm pen ignore or Dwarf +660 racial armor tactic).
New players in T4, once their bolster effect drops down, will have hard time killing anything if their dmg relies on landing physical dmg to armored targets. Any class with armor ignore attackers has benefit over those having to stack WS to land dmg.

When majority of enemy targets are either high/medium armor or armed to teeth with armor talis, then the few remaining targets with less armor are those farmed fastest.

I'd even make the argument that buffing light armor classes to have higher base armor values for the sake of better balance. Making the argument that "medium armored dps have less DPS than light armored DPS" is no longer valid in ROR, or "medium armored healers have less heal output than light armored healer" is something that really rarely happens unless the stars align. Or entirely get rid of light armor and bump them all to same equal medium armor tier to shake up the balance. Something just feels really wrong with the current Risk : Reward ratio when comparing light and medium armor classes.

Tbh, look at my main post from different angle. Going horizional would mean, you could redesign armors from scratch giving them completly different piece and set bonuses, as you would have 15 sets (beastlord / conq / domi / vanq / opp / invader / triumphant / victorious / redeye / sentinel / bloodlord / onslaught / sov main / sov off/ warlord) all "equalized" in terms of stats together, but they would be different, so one could introduce even +armor on cloth as set bonus, or even AoE detaunt instead of ST detaunt (if coding would allow it).

[shoelessHN]

IMO having 3-5% total stat difference between Vanq to Sov is not bad gear progression "imbalance" - there is Invader inbetween as well, so a jump of 3-4% when gaining higher tier gear is allowed to get people interested in gaining more gear, instead of deciding "vanq is good enough" (conq/vanq is good enough for some of my Alts, even if I prefer mains to be in Sov/Inv).
Gear doesn't require some high skill level, for endgame gear you just need to be online at right times to leech forts or somehow have a sleep cycle that allows joining 3-9am servertime cities. (cities occur most at times when number of players online is at lowest, meaning least people defending against the campaign push).

The bigger stat imbalance lies with the armor rates
as you point out, Sov medium armor is 2840 armor, Sov light armor is 1420 and Sov heavy armor is 4260. All the armor costs same, but different classes gain vastly different product for handing in their Royals.
Is it fair? Maybe, maybe not, depends on your POV.
Everyone is stacking armor, everyone is stacking armor pen/ignores to melt armored targets. Healers with low armor melt faster than those with higher armor, and DPS with light armor melt faster than those with medium armor (+ extras like Mara attacker arm pen ignore or Dwarf +660 racial armor tactic).
New players in T4, once their bolster effect drops down, will have hard time killing anything if their dmg relies on landing physical dmg to armored targets. Any class with armor ignore attackers has benefit over those having to stack WS to land dmg.

When majority of enemy targets are either high/medium armor or armed to teeth with armor talis, then the few remaining targets with less armor are those farmed fastest.

I'd even make the argument that buffing light armor classes to have higher base armor values for the sake of better balance. Making the argument that "medium armored dps have less DPS than light armored DPS" is no longer valid in ROR, or "medium armored healers have less heal output than light armored healer" is something that really rarely happens unless the stars align. Or entirely get rid of light armor and bump them all to same equal medium armor tier to shake up the balance. Something just feels really wrong with the current Risk : Reward ratio when comparing light and medium armor classes.

Tbh, look at my main post from different angle. Going horizional would mean, you could redesign armors from scratch giving them completly different piece and set bonuses, as you would have 15 sets (beastlord / conq / domi / vanq / opp / invader / triumphant / victorious / redeye / sentinel / bloodlord / onslaught / sov main / sov off/ warlord) all "equalized" in terms of stats together, but they would be different, so one could introduce even +armor on cloth as set bonus, or even AoE detaunt instead of ST detaunt (if coding would allow it).

But then the people that power leveled their renown to the 80s with 75k fort wins and guaranteed invaders wouldn't have a huge advantage over new players. The horror. I had alts that had 3 piece invader before they were level 30, just can't imagine it being fair that they don't hold that advantage over new players because 'muh time invested'. And thank god I picked up like 3 pieces of sov in gold bags before they nerfed that grind.