I notice this as well.

I think a good solution to this is to put more of an emphasis on the visuals of gathering.

When crafting an item or in combat, you can almost completely ignore the chat log because the visuals are enough to tell you what's happening and what's going wrong. But when gathering, you need to pay attention to the chat log to know where to mine/cut/fish.

Here are my proposals:

1. Scrap the oscillating marker on the 2nd step of gathering. Let us manually adjust it similarly to how we adjust the aim/notch/depth.
2. Scrap the need to gather twice in the same spot; no more "You can't make the final cut just yet". If we found the spot where the item is, give it to us the first time.
3a. The flash that is displayed when gathering needs to get progressively bigger as you get closer to the sweet spot. i.e. if the sweet spot is all the way to the bottom, the flash would be tiny when the marker is at the top and fairly large near the bottom.
3b. Alternatively, let the flashes somehow indicate the direction of the sweet spot. That way players can do some quick triangulation or orienteering to find the spot.