donno ... i just joining my friend guild ;X lol

Expertise in my humble opinion is a must especially if you want the looks ( tailoring ) and stats ( the others eg, weaponsmithing, platesmithing, goldsmithing ) and not to mention the side money you gonna earn from it. Just take tailoring for example , one of my guildie is already at proficiency of 194 / 199 and you start to see people selling those homebound sets and natural sets for like 700k or more although it does take hours to craft and the materials are expensive but overall you still get the profit and homebound is quite a lovely set too. As for stats, you get to craft 1-5 stars items, I went goldsmithing due to the accessories crafting where you can craft up to the highest tier accessories now compared to other  expertise which only craft up to the lv58 set. 3stars items gives an estimate of  5-10% stat bonus 4stars at 10-15% and 5stars at 20-25%. Expertise do take alot of time and alot of gold to rank though. There's x2 expertise going on till tomorrow ( PST 00.00 Monday / GMT+8 15.00 Monday ) so make good use of it.

You can survive without those expertise but you will be missing some of the stuffs. As for whether expertise makes the jourmey easier, just slightly . The reasone due
- crafting at npc requires gold while expertise don't but needs time
- npc crafted item WILL always be 2 stars while you get a random of 1-5, rarely 1 and 5
- less materials needed to craft using expertise
- you get three extra title without stat bonus each time u passed a test
- you can get some set only craft-able via expertise like homebound but the stats are  pretty negligible , just for the looks as i mentioned
- some items are only craft-able via expertise but they are pretty negligible
- generate some golds by selling profession

Cons
- expertise takes a LOT of time... probably be spending hours crafting there
- mats needed to rank expertise are way overpriced
- mats not available in marketplace which can be frustrating
- offers only up to level 58 equipments which is one tier lower than the current one , level 61 equipments
- 89-99 proficiency takes 1 day per craft due to the quest where you have to clear specific dungeon for 3 times to get 3 proofs and exchange it for 2 beginner   
  finish
- 189-199 proficiency takes 2 days per two crafts due to the daily quest I mentioned earlier, just that you need 3 beginner finish instead of 2 and you can only get
  2 per said day
- 289-299 proficiency takes 2 days per craft , you'll be needed 4 beginner finish per craft

Overall, you don't lose much if you skip expertise if you just play the game for the joy of hacking and slashing, you'll just be missing one component of the game but I still recommend you take some time into if you are willing to spend some gold.

You can uncheck the box at the proxy instead of the rules which will use your normal IP to play instead of the proxy server IP. For less spikes and lags, use OpenVPN especially paid one like Surfbouncer which gives you 1-2 bars in most of the hosts and you get less spikes and lags due to the TCP / TAP eventhough is 1 bar. If it's still spiky and laggy most likely is either your connection is poor in general ( < 5Mbps  ), host is lagging ( connection-wise or computer-wise ) , or your computer itself is lagging.

try replace ur Hs with mine. pls backup yours.

hs.rar

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJp7r6LhYmI

just follow everything in the video.