Not to be a pain, but.....
Rooting does not cause OTA to fail and neither does freezing the bloatware.
The space saved by deleting bloat is like putting an eyedropper full of water in a bucket.
If you *DO NOT* know the effects of what you are doing, don't do it.
VZW has always required all apps to be in place to update.
This is a check to see if you have not just rooted your phone, but modified the stock file system.
They release the software, so you can complain all you want.
They also say, don't root. But definitely DO NOT remove bloat unless there is a equivalent of an SBF available.
A "Factory Reset", is not like a system restore on a Windows machine.
On an Android device "Factory Restore" wipes all the settings, etc.
There is no need to have a restore partition to get apps back because under normal circumstances you cannot remove and factory system files.
I'll say it again, unless there is an SBF, be very careful about modifying system files.