Awhile back I missed a week or two in profession knowledge. I got weak aura that now says i am behind 9 points in alchemy and 5 points in engineering.
The thing is - I literally have done everything daily for a month now and have STILL not been able to catch up.
Why is this? You miss a spark, you catch up instantly. You miss knowledge points - you’re permanently behind.
What am I doing wrong - please advise.
Based on what I am experiencing on my professions, that close to catching up you should be seeing Work Orders awarding one, maybe two, Flickers per week per profession.
If you are not seeing those Work Orders, then the game system does not agree that you are behind no matter what the weak aura says.
The only crafting profession that can be fully caught up is enchanting. The rest, the closest I got is 1 point behind in engy. And I too do my best to fill in those patrons WOs with KPs items. So you are not alone.
The “catch up” kind of relies in getting lucky with what crafting orders spawn for you. If you were fully caught up, those orders wouldn’t spawn at all. As long as you are behind they keep spawning, but only 1-2 a day, so the catchup process is very slow.
I get 3 flicker patron orders for tailoring and alchemy each every day after reset no matter how far behind my alt is, I think that’s the “catch up” mechanic. if so it’s contingent on logging in each and every day which isn’t the friendliest. 
“Catch Up” is misleading, there is no catching up among the crafting professions. The patron system will only allow so many work orders per week and it’s a crap shoot at what you are getting. I get a lot requests for recipes I don’t have or recipes in trees I didn’t spec in, also some specs you have to be rich to be able do the a good number of the patron orders, blacksmithing, engineering and jewelcrafting. Gathering professions can probably catch up in a solid weekend, with the exception of skinning maybe.
There is catchup. The single KP craft orders will only spawn if you are behind in points.
Fly around and loot those globs of waxes, they sometimes have points in them. I don’t know if they have extra points. As far as I know, most catch up points (aside from enchanting) come from patron orders.
Alchemy: I seem to get more patron orders awarding kp’s on new characters.
Enchanting: I’ve had so many catchup points thrown at me, even on a character that hadn’t yet picked up Khaz Algar Enchanting, that I didn’t realize I hadn’t picked up KA enchanting until I got around to trying to level it a couple of weeks later. I was able to DE current gear, get new recipe drops and as mentioned, bunches and bunches of catch up points.
Engineering: I don’t know I kind of gave up bc points seem so pointless after a point (pun unintended)
Everything else: I stopped leveling everything else and just go alchemy/enchanting now except hunter has skinning but I don’t chase points.
I know that some points are once-offs, so it might be you can never get the ones you seem to be missing. That’s what someone more professional than me told me.
Catch ups for the crafting professions is through the patron’s WOs except for enchanting. Chanting can just keep disenchanting stuff after the weekly allotment. Gathering start getting catch ups after the weekly allotment also. Difference is that gathering controls just how fast the catch up can go… Just keep gathering. Crafting has to wait for those 1 KPs WOs. Those are on a very slow trickle and brutal rng. As far as I know, the only crafting profession that can be absolutely up to date is enchanting, the others are ALWAYS behind.
Yeah I really want to switch one of my prof but at this point I would be soooooooooo far behind and the catch up doesn’t really catch you up. Even if you just get 2 extra points a week at this point you won’t catch up before the release of the new exp. Kinda silly
You will because there aren’t unlimited points. Eventually you get them all. Even sooner than that, you get all the important ones. Right now, assuming 0 catch up points, if you got every point available the first professions would max in late February. I have all 8 profs, and my last one will max in late June. And that’s one where in missed many points due to cost and build issues (blacksmithing). That’s also assuming 0 catch up points, ignoring Darkmoon fair bonuses, and assuming no new sources of knowledge in the. 1 patch (.1 added new treasures in DF, as well as skill books via currency). So there is plenty of time to catch up before the end of the expansion.
Have you collected all of the +3 knowledge treasures ?
Do you dig treasures?
Do you buy a treatise every week?
Also Dark Moon Fair ends today.
Did you order an engineer treatise this week from a scribe?
The treatises, and DMF for that matter, are not part of the catch ups, you miss them and tis gone. The catch up mechanism is for the dirt treasures, the weekly quests, gathered KP items allotment or the patrons WOs you missed/didn’t get listed or were unable to craft/gather.