Now the obvious answer is have shards be replaced by crystals in level 20+ recipes. After all, in level 20+ mines you start mining them, but they are useless in all but a handful of level 50 crafts for 1-star items. Clusters should be for 41-50 gear, instead of an even smaller amount of 1 and 2-star recipes. However, for unknown reasons, SE have it that the easiest item in the world to obtain is used in vast quantities by every crafter in the game.

So yes, in my opinion and for the reasons stated above, shards need reworking/replacing sooner with crystals/clusters to curb this marketable area for the RMTs.