It was never said specialist was linked to actual recipes, that was nothing more than an assumption others made. It also wasn't mentioned this time, so it may or may not be true. Means that it is still worth leveling at least one alt to 50. This seems a lot like everyone will have let's say 12 available cross class skills and 3 available specialist skills. Meaning specialist is mainly used to give more available options when it comes towards crafting rotations.