Yea, although you make great points here - Blizz painted themselves into a corner with the direction they took with professions. By attaching attribute increasing qualities to them they almost had to equalize all of them, or you would see everyone min/max oriented always taking the profession that boosts their stats the most. Somethign I fear might also happen with the Pandapeople. Since their race ability is 2x food buff, to me it seems the most straight-forward boost to dps/healing/tanking of the race buffs (pvp related ones aside) - so is everyone gonna be a panda?

P.S. In reference to swtors professions - i like them a lot too. One of the coolest aspects of their professions is the gathering ones. I found myself wanting to make a pair of boots that were lower level for a new alt - but i had long since run out of the mats needed for something so low level. And I thought dam - i gotta go back to that low level planet and run around looking for this stuff? or pay stupid ammounts for it on AH? nope - i just lowered the level on the crew mission and sent out my crew in 5 mins i had plenty of the 'old' mat i needed and never skipped a beat in what i really wanted to do. ty bw.