Hello! I'm Prium, I wanted to suggest a way to become a trader, or even have a more in depth character around professions.
My idea is, for all gathering professions they'd require a certain amount of ability points to be learned, and even more for professions that require more, such as tailoring, enchanting,jewelcrafting, etc.
A rough estimate I'd say is a way to be able by the end, to have maybe 6-8 professions learned, at the cost of basically gutting a build by at least 80-90% A trader has some ways of defending themselves in defense in offense, if they travel alone right?
This could be a stepping stone to being able to bribe,enthrall,even coerce humanoids to your side for a pet slot. There are many ideas that come with this.
To make sure this isn't abusable, if you happen to change talent trees, I'd feel they should be removed, up to the 2 ones your allowed to have, having a warning sign of removal of professions before changing a build.
Prestige: Now I've no idea if you lose your professions, but if you prestige while being a trader, another idea would be once prestiged you'd lose them all, but gain a
Profession passive, called Skinning expertise, or Jewelcrafting expertise as examples and with that, your gathering expertise would allow you to gather...some other form of currency, or even an increase in speed while collecting, maybe even an additional stat bonus to what they get later on, or even early on granting for Skinning expertise critical strike chance by 3 or 5.
For say Blacksmithing Expertise for example, the gear or weapons you create add 1 additional stat bonus that's random, and for weapons specifically, increasing their damage by 2 or 3. If people wanted to take being a trader further in prestiging repeatedly, it could be argued that there could be 10 levels of professional, adding 1 additional stat extra per rank of prestige. Weapon creation on damage being 2-3 damage cumulative per as well, now this is for each profession, having a standalone General skill for that profession upon prestiging.
Hope ya let me know what ya think