Shards: The Unattainable

Have you noticed that gathering a large amount of shards is near impossible? I need 12000 shards to finish my Goldsmith luminary Hammer. I thought well i can go farm up some shards with miner, but you only get 4~6 shards per mining point. So i thought well maybe i can go kill some mobs, but that was a bust because no mobs drop shards except elementals and after killing 5 in a row i only got 1 shard. So i thought well maybe i could just buy the shards, hrmm 4000 shards cost about 150kish, and being gil is hard to come buy i would be broke and unable to buy anything else or get repairs.
Dear Yoshi, please allow mobs to drop shards again or there will be no progress in the crafting classes.