I went with alchemy and I am very very glad I did. Being able to use rare damage poisons all the time is great, and it also means I can use the rare special effects poisons plus stat/health/resist potions without having to pay stupid amounts of money for them. Basically most people aren't going to use rare poisons/potions as an everyday thing because they're so expensive to buy, but if you choose alchemy it is easy to do so and almost as cheap as using normal crafted items. Given that almost all other crafted items are so easy to get, and that poisons and potions are consumables we go through a lot of I think alchemy is one of the best if not the best option for us.