If I want to be a powerhouse in the PVE/PVP aspects of the game do I have room to spend points in crafting? I am honestly not exactly sure how all this works.
Can you level a character just in crafting without leveling that involves adventuring?
IIRC there is a total of 300 Skill Points in the game, between skyshards, special missions and world bosses. But I reckon that if you want to specialise in combat your crafting will either be 'limited' or at least you won't be able to level more than one to max (with all the skills)
You can upgrade gear with crafting and it doesn't take many points to be able to craft the best stuff. It's like 9 or 10 points max. Most of the crafting skills are luxury ones that just reduce times or increase material gains.
Consensus seems to be that you can comfortably max out 1-2 crafting professions by level 50 and still be plenty "viable" in PvE/PvP.
You don't even need to max them though. Some of the skills are nice bonuses for heavy duty crafters, but entirely unneeded.
I imagine any hardcore min/maxer will argue you must invest everything into combat abilities, but there's something to be said for diversity beyond smashing your face against the attack button.
Personally I'm going to focus on making armor/weapons that I need, and have an alternate character for alchemy and enchanting, which covers most of the bases.
With only being able to use 10 actives and 2 ultimates total, you really don't have to spread yourself thin in combat to also do plenty of crafting. Not that many passives work without specific weapons/skills equipped either.
This is where I come in and say... don't try to min/max yourself to death. Do what you love. If you love both hardcore pvp and crafting, then mix them until you are satisfied with each. You can sit and crunch numbers all day long, but what ultimately matters is that you enjoy your time playing the game.
Like someone else said.. you can slot 12 abilities total.. and no more. You have skill points to spare, even if you are the most hardcore min/maxer...
As previously said you can max out probably 2 crafting trees on main character, unless you make a dedicated crafting character which would then be gimped in abilities, but it can still be done, i have for example a main character who gives everything to my crafter, but it needs leveling just the same, makes quests harder but not impossible