A8: The specialist system is a new system for Disciples of the Hand, and you’ll be able to undertake a quest to become a specialist from level 55. It’ll be possible to become a specialist in three classes of your choice. By using “scrips” you’ll be able to change which classes you specialize in afterwards. By setting a specialist class, you’ll be able to learn special actions. Currently, in order to make some of the higher difficulty recipes, there is a necessity to level various classes for their actions, and we feel that the difficulty has spiked a bit. We plan to improve this through the specialist system, so you can think of this system as something that will allow you to broaden your options by either playing as the classes you really like or enabling you to use all of the classes.
It's definitely not what I had predicted earlier, but this is a substantial departure from what was said in previous interviews where they had said new recipes would be linked to the Specialist system (which they are NOT saying here). What it sounds like is for classes you are not specialized in, it'll be about what we are used to in terms of hardcore crafting rotations needing all the cross class skills. The Specialist system will give skills powerful enough to make up for not having all the cross class skills.