I wrote a post not too long ago about the masteries and skill trees...
Spanktastik wrote:
For all who are complaining about the whole 2-mastery thing at lvl 90... what Joymax is TRYING to do is make the game more even and give it more variety.
By only being able to max 2 masteries, you're forced to choose your weapon skills, and a force of your choice.
The weapon is self explanatory... You get its passive and its skills. But the forces are whats going to make the game different and more even.
If you choose Fire for your force, you're deciding on doing lots of damage since fire is the strongest. In return, you are sacrificing speed and defense. Good for STR based characters because of the buffs.
If you choose Lightning for your force, you're deciding on relying on speed and doing decent damage. Good for INT heavy characters because of the buffs.
If you choose Cold for your force, you're deciding on defense over damage and speed. Good for both INT (because INT has low hp) and STR (because you can be a beast of a tank) based characters.
If you choose Force for your force, you're basically the odd-one out, but a key player in guild/job wars as you would be a healer/resser. You get no buffs or imbues, no cool damage spells, etc. But if you look at a lot of other online games, healers are meant for healing... not dealing damage.
As far as STR and INT goes, I'm not sure what they want you to do with those... maybe they want you to go hybrid, maybe they don't care. It's all up to you I guess.
So you see, Joymax not trying to piss you off, they're trying to make a more balanced game where everybody has their own thing, rather than everyone using the SAME buffs and the SAME nukes and the SAME everything just to see who can hit harder. Does that mean I like the idea? Not necessarily... but it will make the game more interesting for sure.
EDIT: The above is based on 150 cap. At 90 cap you can max 2 masteries PLUS your weapon mastery with the lvl 90 cap (and still have 30 mastery points left).