Rise of Kingdoms Talent Tree Rework: Live March 4, Poseidon Nerfed, No Second Pass Dated

The Rise of Kingdoms talent tree rework is not coming, it is here. It shipped on March 4, 2026, on mobile and on the Windows client the same day, and the in-game notes framed it as a rebalance of skill, smite and combo damage. I follow Lilith's patch cadence rather than any single commander, and this is the first patch I have seen rewrite what the shared Attack, Defense and Support nodes actually do.

Two things matter to you. First, which of your commanders the rework touched, by name and by damage type. Second, whether a second pass is dated. It is not, and this page says so rather than guess.

The talent tree rework is live since March 4, and it is confirmed

Confirmed and live since March 4, 2026. The patch landed on mobile and on the Windows client the same day. I updated the PC client that evening and the new tooltips were already in.

This was a balance pass, not a new tree. No node moved and no point was refunded on my account. What each node does changed, and that is the whole story below.

What Lilith was fixing

• Skill damage ruled the shared trees for years. Almost every top commander scaled off it, so the Skill branch was the default pick.
• Smite and combo damage came in with the newest legendaries and walked past the old reductions. Defensive and support commanders fell out of the meta.
• The rework closes that gap. The shared trees now count all three damage types, so an older kit keeps a job.

Sources for the date: the in-game patch notes and LootBar's write-up of the same patch both carry March 4.

Attack, Defense and Support trees now count smite and combo

Three shared trees changed: Attack, Defense and Support. Their buff nodes now carry Smite Damage and Combo Damage modifiers next to the old skill-damage ones. A point you spent against skill damage now works against smite and combo too.

Your points did not move. On my maxed commanders, all 74 sat exactly where I left them after the update. Only the tooltips read differently, so you benefit without spending a reset.

What you should check tonight

• Open a Defense-tree commander and read the damage-reduction nodes. You should see skill, smite and combo listed together.
• Armaments and inscriptions were adjusted in the same patch. Re-read yours before you reroll anything.
• MetaRoK caught up on March 31, 2026. Its changelog logs the smite and combo reductions, so any build you copy from there is post-rework.

A talent reset still costs gems. I found no free reset tied to this patch, not in the notes and not in my mailbox. Respec the one commander you fight with most, and leave the rest.

Poseidon takes the biggest hit, then the six smite legendaries

Poseidon is the one commander named in the nerf list. His Violent Waves skill used to slow up to five enemy marches by 50% at once. It now stacks its slow on a single target.

In my first open-field fight after the patch, the slow stuck to one march and built up over a few seconds. The four marches beside it kept moving. That is the fight Lilith wanted back.

Who else the rework touches

• Six commanders carry the Smite talent branch, all Legendary, by RokStats' count. The rework did not touch their branch. It gave everyone else a defense against it.
• Sun Tzu Prime runs Infantry, Versatility and Smite. His damage now meets reductions that did not exist before March 4.
• Cheok Jun-gyeong has been a smite commander since the Frontiers of Knowledge update of May 13, 2025, per the notes BlueStacks relayed.
• William Marshal and Ivan IV arrived on August 27, 2026 with version 1.1.11, five months after the rework. Nothing in their kits predates the new modifiers.

If you main one of them, your damage did not change. The other side's mitigation did. Which of them still deserves your sculptures is the guide's call, not this page's.

No second talent tree pass is dated, and I will not invent one

Status: unknown. As of this writing, Lilith has announced no follow-up to the March 4 talent rework. No date, no version number, no teaser, and I will not put one here.

Version 1.1.11 on August 27, 2026 did not touch talents. I logged in on the Windows client after the downtime and read the notes. They covered the 8th anniversary events, a Yi Seong-gye outfit, KvK changes and the two new commanders.

Where a date would show first

• The in-game patch notes, usually posted a few days before the maintenance window.
• The official Discord and the Lilith community forum, which carry the same notes plus the downtime hours.
• Not a talent database. MetaRoK and RokStats update after a patch, never before it.

Until then, rebuild on the trees you have. The anniversary events are running now, so you are logging in anyway. A 74-node tree is easier to read on a monitor than on a phone, and the Windows client weighs about 5 GB.

The dated board for the Rise of Kingdoms talent tree rework, oldest first. Only the last line is unknown, and it stays that way until Lilith says otherwise.

Read next

• Rise of Kingdoms: PC, VIP, commanders and KvK on one page
• Which commanders to level first with the reworked talents
• Rise of Kingdoms on PC: Windows client, 5 GB, Mac
• Like Rise of Kingdoms on PC, but without VIP tiers
• Upcoming free PC games: the confirmed dates and F2P switches