Alchemist -
They haven't been as appealing to most since they lost the ability to make practical chainmail to smiths. Currently, we could incorporate lapis and emeralds into their transmute ore ability. In 1.4, alchemists should be able to use dye along with scribes. To add much more value to alchemists, they should be able to make mob heads in 1.4, for a potentially pricy cost (ex: 50 bones + 2 spider eyes + 20 arrows + 1 bow = 1 skeleton head, or 200 bones + 100 soul sand + 2 spider eyes + flint and tinder = 1 wither skeleton head).
Enchanter –
Enchanter has always seemed a bit masochistic to me – you mine for X hours to get a whopping X amount of experience to lose it in an enchant or two. Obviously it’s a trade off, but I know tons of people shy away from enchanter when they hear that you lose your hard earned levels. With this in mind, you could potentially restrict the amount of enchants in a matter of hours/days to allow players to keep their levels.
Engineer -
They seem pretty fleshed out as is. It might be extreme, but restricting tripwires, buttons, and pressure plates to them is a possibility to add more practical use (many engineers don't have any idea how to actually use the redstonition commands given to them).
Farmer –
Again a masochistic class, nobody in their right mind wants to spam break crops all day for tiny amounts of exp. Almost all mastered farmers I know have used and still use the sheep shearing method. Granted it’s a good way to do it, but nobody is actually doing the FARMING portion of farmer. With this in mind, it might be a good idea to greatly increase crop experience (1.5x to 3x) and decrease sheep experience (I know, again). In 1.4, possibly restrict carrots on a stick to farmers.
Mason –
The mason is a cool class, as well. I brought up restricting tripwires, buttons, and pressure plates to engineers before, and I think this could also apply to masons. Yes, everybody loves falsebook, but what vanilla minecraft purpose do they play? Not much as it stands.
Merchant –
Villager trade and ender chests at the same level (55)? I think these should be tapered apart in the merchant skill earning scheme. Possibly set ender chests at 45 or 50 instead, as the villager trade is one of the things most people go merchant for. Is gift still broken? It’s a neat idea, but I don’t think anybody uses it, especially since the range is only 15 blocks… Overall, merchant is good class that needs a few tweaks to get it on par with that of mason or smith.
Miner –
Increase the .15x chance per level increase for a double drop from ores (maybe to .3x?). This is one of miner’s most important and critical skills that simply does not come out to be worth it in the end. Superheat is useless, and I’ve heard “Light” can be detrimental to mining itself (creating lag and blocking vision below you). Excavate is a nice skill, but I hear it’s not useful when you’re using a high efficiency diamond pickaxe. TNT is in the right place, though, and that’s why most people go miner in the first place.
Scribe -
I've always felt the scribe is a slight offshoot from enchanter, and could easily be combined into enchanter. Restricting books/bookcases/written books/maps to them should definitely be considered. Paintings/item frames too? In 1.4, scribes should be able to use dye along with alchemists, as well as beacon usage as mentioned before. I also want to bring something up - what really is a scribe? It seems like we just smashed a bunch of semi useless combat/misc. skills into a profession and hoped for the best here.
Smith -
Probably one of the best classes right now with the ability to make chain, I don’t think it needs that much adjustment. From experience, this is a rewarding class and I know many others can say the same.
Also, unrelated, but it would be need if Necros got a skill to spawn bats in 1.4 - maybe like 5+ or so that could potentially protect them from damage as the bats would absorb a few hits.
Alchemist:
I agree with what you said about alchemist, being able to craft mob heads would be pretty cool and unique for them. I also think that the transmute conversion rates should be buffed a little; i believe that the conversion for lapiz is 16(wiki says 12 but im not sure if that is right) to 1 diamond.
I would suggest-
A reduction in cd of transmute to 1 minute (from 2)
10 lapiz for 1 diamond (instead of 12)
The coal conversion rate is ok
Then 16 iron ore for 1 gold (currently 18) It fits into a stack much better and makes transmute far better.
Enchanter:
For enchanter i don't really think that putting a max amount of enchants per day would make it a more attractive crafter class. It might save people some levels but it would greatly reduce their effectiveness in general. I have to ask if the xp needed to enchant stuff was increased since last map, because i remember enchanting knockback 2 swords for 60 xp each when now people are telling me it takes 150 xp each. I would suggest a low required xp cost in general, this would make them more appealing and take care of the massive xp loss.
Engineer:
To be honest i don't know that much about engineers, or how they work so i don't have an expert opinion on them. However from what i can tell they are still extremely useful when the engineer understands what they are doing.
Farmer:
I agree that it would be good to boost the amount of xp you get from actually farming instead of just nonstop shearing sheep.
Mason:
I would agree to restricting tripwires to masons however i would not agree to restricting pressure plates and buttons to masons. I don't agree with restricting pressure plates to masons because if a mason we needed to place them, i don't think people would use them anymore. It would be too large of a hassle to put in something that really doesn't do that much, especially because it offers no protecting to a house on a regioned area. I don't agree with restricting buttons to masons because then it might require several different types of crafter specs to finish one project. Lets say you wanted to build a redstone system that encorperated pistons and was activated by a button. Then you would have to bring in a mason and an engineer. This would make creating cool redstone devices a lot harder and more annoying than they have to be.
Merchant:
I currently think that merchants are pretty good off at the moment because of their ability to trade with villagers, allowing them to get items that otherwise, are impossible to get. These items, such as fortune picks, make them alot of money and more than make up for a lack of a central trading location such as the trade district that we had last map. I would suggest, however, more events in which people would obtain villager eggs because if only some people have villagers then the wealth starts to pool especially when the group of people are able to get a really good deal. Also the amount of emeralds needed to upgrade a town is impossible to achieve without having villagers to trade with, or buying it off of someone who has villagers for staggering cost.
Miner:
For miner i do agree that an increase in their double drop in necessary. I also think that there needs to be a new way to get gunpowder. Gunpowder is going to become extremely rare, because it is used as a reagent, most people just drop it when they get it, when a creeper is killed it sometimes drops gold nuggets instead and because of tnt. When tnt comes out the price of gunpowder is going to skyrocket, making it an extremely expensive reagent and make tnt very expensive. People will most likely rely on their miners to obtain the tnt and it will take alot of tnt to make a cannon so this will put a large burden on the miner.
I suggest:
.5% x level change of obtaining gunpowder when you mine coal.
This would make gunpowder far less rare, and lift a large burden off the miner. Also there is a large supply of coal and coal would be the most logical thing to obtain gunpowder from.
Scribe: I think that restricting writing books to scribes would be good but i don't really agree with restricting book cases to scribes because they are used far too often because it wouldn't help the scribe, just be annoying for the rest of the server.
Smith: I think that smiths are very well off at the moment especially because they will be able to use anvils with 1.4.
Overall i liked your presentation of the crafter specs and this is my review of the presentation.