The mace fighting "stagger" mastery sounds like a special attack. Dear developers and God and Santa, please make it a competetive alternative to Armor Ignore. I'd love to be a macer again but right now it's just the war axe skill because nobody wants to use a 4s weapon with crushing blow or some crap. Right now nobody even wants maces, go check the relative price of the respective 120 scrolls.
Yeah, a lot of the Weapon Masteries don't make any sense. Something tells me that the Macing Mastery, "Stagger" is going to be another crappy direct damage ability that does little damage in PvM in comparison to AI/DS. "Toughness" just assigns Macers the role of "Player Tank". You know something's ****ed up with Macing when a 120 Macing PS is 1/30th the price of a 120 Swords PS. Macing Weps are just too slow, don't have enough good Special combinations, and hasn't received a good artifact since the Berserker's Maul in AoS. How about adding a Passive Mastery for Macing, that causes it to deal 3x Stamina Damage?
"Pierce" for Fencing, even further cheapens Macing, since heavy Stamina damage was once the niche of Macing. The "Hit Fatigue" item property also cheapens Macing's niche. "Thrust" for Fencing is pretty pointless, considering Fencing Weps are already insanely fast enough that most of them can easily hit max swing speed without any SSI. Fencing has a few good weapons, particularly the Leaf Blade.
The "Onslaught" Mastery for Swords, honestly looks like it belongs more in Macing, simulating crushing the armor/scales/carapace of a creature and weakening it's defenses. Swords easily has the best weapon and artifact selection of any melee wep skill, from the Katana's DS/AI, to the Double Axe's DS/WW, to the Radiant Scimitar being the only 1H WW wep in game.
Oh, ****ing great. Now Archers are getting an AoE ability they can use regardless of what bow they have equipped (access to AoE, AI and Moving Shot all at once), as if they didn't already outclass Melee (when previously, AoE was the only thing Melee had over Archers/Throwers). But wait, there's more! Archers can also provide a SSI/HCI buff to party members! Wtf?
Wrestling Masteries...wtf? Did the devs miss the point that Wrestling is used purely as a defensive skill by some Mages (mainly Focused Nox Mages)? Or are they adding in new weapons that utilize the Wrestling skill? That's the only way i can see the Wrestling Masteries being even remotely useful.
Parrying's "Shield Bash" is kind of stupid. Paralyze is crappy in both PvP and PvM. It's kind of crappy in PvP, considering how easily Para is broken by Trap Boxes, and how you can't Para a Mage that's in mid cast. Para is worthless in PvM, because you're just going to break the Para with an attack in 1.25 secs. "Shield Bash" would be better if it provided a guaranteed Spell Interrupt in PvP, even through Protection, similar to Force Arrow. It'd be better in PvM, if it Stunned the target, or once again, if it acted like Force Arrow.
http://www.uoguide.com/Force_Arrow
All the Masteries that increase HCI or DI are pretty useless if they don't go above the cap.