I'm even less of a fan of this quest mechanic than I was at the start.
If you have an army of alts, I'm sure it's fine, but for the rest of the players out there it is an exercise in frustration and wasted time.
The server I currently play on is stuck waiting for an armorer to log on so we can get a combine. We have all the other classes standing around doing nothing, we're not even able to help on the other steps until the armorer appears. Every day the chat is full of "Looking for Armorer for HQ combine". We have all other 8 classes available, but none of them can do anything. Assuming an armorer ever shows up and doesn't get /telled to death, then we're all then going to be looking for a Woodworker at the same time, and then a Sage, Tailor, Jeweler...
Yes I know people are going to start with "if you don't like it, make an armorer and spend 2 weeks grinding faction" but that's not the point (I have actually started this now, and have 11 days left)
The PoP quest at least allowed you to work on other sections of the quest if the one class you needed wasn't on. We all know how frustrating that part of the quest was, so why take a much hated gameplay mechanic and then make it even worse ? It doesn't make the quest harder, or more challenging, or anything other than simply more frustrating. Is that the best gameplay we can come up with after months and months of development ?
In my view what I hoped would have happened with this quest was something like this:
1. Have 9 different items crafted for you, one from each TS class. These could be done in any order.
2. Take 3 of those items and have them combined by an Adorner to make an item.
3. Take another 3 of those 9 items and have them combined by a Tinkerer.
4. Take the final 3 items and have them broken down by a Transmuter to obtain 3 special raws.
5. You then take those 2 crafted items and the 3 raws and make the final item in a times/instant death crafting zone event.
Please please please, do think carefully about the impact on the sanity of your players of using these additional artificial roadblocks in any future quests.