Crafting is fun!

[Nalien]

I don't really feel like you have to though.

I think they mean more in the sense that you cannot reliably HQ without access to the majority of the cross-class skills, which you're only going to have by leveling the majority of the crafts. That's the biggest problem with crafting in this game, and the Specialist system didn't really do anything about it (despite SE claiming it would). If you want to be a good Weaver, you have to level everything else to get those cross-class skills.

I'm fairly certain they admitted this was a problem in the lead up to Heavensward, and claimed the Specialist system would be addressing it, but it doesn't. Specialists don't really do anything right now...