Same problem! Double gatherer with over 5k mettle. Only spent it on chef/fishing equipment.
To be fair, in about 2-3 months I will max my gathering and be able to buy… more mettle… which I cannot use for anything.
Even my JC/alchemy alts are mettle rich and knowledge poor. The only way to flip that around is accept work orders using their own mettle - and there’s no need to, because everyone just talks to Thomas/Miguel and gets their weekly instalment. The only time mettle is short is the first couple of weeks when you want to get some profession gear crafted. But what you do there is… just wait a bit.
I don’t know why knowledge is so limited in the first place.
I maxed BS on my hunter which i don’t play much anymore and so all the knowledge shards i get from dungeons are on a char that has no professions. Now taking on a new profession would take forever to be even remotely able to make anything. I mean 9 points per week is really terrible.
for blacksmith to create 1 max weapon slot you need 140 knowledge points. to top it off you also need renown and also need to spend a ton of gold to max out skillpoints as well.
now i have maxed out swords and apparently nobody wants to craft any swords anymore. what a waste
really stupid that you cannot use public ordering system to set min. quality to 5 then the system would actually be used.