Miner North of Level 20

I burned through my stash of lightning shards leveling Weaver to 50, so I decided to start leveling Miner. My question is, strictly for the purposes of farming/selling shards is there a benefit to leveling Miner past 20? It looks like the double shard abilities set in then.

I understand the potential farming benefits of being 50MIN, I'm strictly looking at this from a shard perspective. Or from an experienced Miner, are the benefits good enough to warrant leveling to 50?

Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

If you're in it PURELY for shards, then... no, I don't see a reason to level miner past 20. You should, however, also level Botanist to 20 for the other 3 shard skills, letting you take all 6 on both classes.

However, as a 50 crafter, you will also be needing crystals (for 1-star synths) and clusters (for 2-star synths), and to be able to gather those, you will need to be level 30 and level 50, respectively.

Actually, there IS a reason to level past 20. At level 30 nodes, you start to see nodes where you obtain double harvests with a sufficient amount of elemental resistance. This means that, using those nodes, you can rotate between just three nodes and get the same shard yield that you'd get by rotating through four at level 20. That's a significant improvement. I recommend leveling Miner and Botanist until you reach the proper level of elemental resistance to harvest whatever type of shards you're after.

It's also worth noting that the level 30 nodes are also where you can dig up Crystals. If you level to 41, then you can use the double-shard abilities to dig up double-Crystals as well.

Just a general comment, there's usually no reason to ever rotate through all 4 nodes. Pick the 3 that are best for your goal. It's surprising how few gatherers do that.