I had an idea that I think could be beneficial to the player base without breaking any of the underlying game mechanics. It has to do with the "cast time" involved in crafting and gathering. My thought is to have the time reduced by 1 second for every level of mastery you are above the item you are trying to gather or craft.
How this would work would be something like this. As an Apprentice level (1-20) in any crafting or gathering skill you are trying to use, you get the full 5 second "cast time". When you advance to the Craftsman level (20-40) you still get the full 5 second time while processing items or materials in that level range, but only a 4 second time when doing anything that you learned at the Apprentice level. Similarly at Expert you'd have only 3 seconds on a level 1-20 item, 4 seconds on 21-40, and the full 5 seconds on 41-60. And finally at Master, you'd have only 2 seconds of processing time to deal with level 1-20 gathering or crafting.
This would reflect how you've managed to master each stage of your training, giving you a slight benefit while processing lower level items, but not any change to the current level items that you are "studying" and learning to master.
