With maybe 5 hours of crafting a day on weaver in season 3 I was able to get a pretty solid 2nd on my server. Gathering is pretty definitely even more about time spent but I'd hesitate to say people would bot in such a high visibility environment. Unhealthy lifestyle or highly flexible schedule seems more plausible to me. My experience with Firmament basically seems to indicate that if you don't have those 18 hours a day to dedicate to it for any future restoration events in other cities, it's probably better to stick to the crafting for ranking week.