Lower classes going to a grade too early really isn't an issue. If you level isn't high enough and your gathering stat too low you'll never be able to obtain what you're after at that node anyway until you rank up. Prime example was doing electrum ore at 25 last week at wells. I rarely was able to get a swing at electurm and when I was 70% of the time I damaged it and was unable to obtain it. Even doing cobalt ore at rank 31 in cedarwood is pretty fruitless. Tie in the fact that if you're boosting gathering you probably have no output and maybe get 3-4 attempts at a node. Personally I move to the next grade up 8 ranks before I get that ability. There's no way I'm going to grind an area getting less than 200 xp per swing.

As for being able to target the ??? while running around, I do find that useful but all too often (at least for botany) I find a harvest point next to a logging point and end up getting confused/running past/etc because I thought that was just a harvest point. For mining half the time I can't target the ??? because it's on the other side of a small cliff or ledge which for whatever reason is untargetable unless I'm in front of it.

Duno, was just a suggestion. I figured if you're within 40 yalms of a node it should pop on your map. Would just make gathering a bit easier/less tedious.