Why do you think you can only have 100 skill? Did I miss something in the patch?
About you able to change your stats or not. You havnt even seen the stats for crafting yet. These are just the gathering stats. Also because you can have more than 1 stat at max, its impossible for you to say you will only be good at one thing.
About you able to change or gain stats. Its much faster now. Plus they are adding in, each time you gain an exp level you will have a chance to move stats around.
Fyrex, I believe that was Drevar or something as I'm not a fan of the locking skill system. However, after messing around with test server for about 4 hours last night. I believe it might be the best route to go. But doing this would also make it a hardcap and not a soft cap.
I agree there is a balancing problem with how skills are dropping.
IMO they need to be stack ranked. Meaning if I have a skill thats 100, dropping it to 99.9 should take another skill going from 15 to 35, because going from 15.0 to 15.1 and having your 100 skill drop is not funny.