Ability to Downgrade Elemental Crystals into Shards.

[Giantbane]

It's a domino effect. The one thing you left off this list, which will have a direct impact on high-level crafters, is that all of the recipes for Master books only require shards. You need 8 and 7 shards per craft, and that's if you didn't need shards at all while crafting the base materials for those book crafts (which admittedly, most take crystals), so before the nerf you would need a bare minimum of 400/350 shards to get one i70 tool (no fails, previously buying all mats). When the amount of turn-ins decreased, so did the price of master demimateria, and the amount of endgame crafters (3-4*) jumped significantly.

Also, every attribute potion of the highest level only requires shards.

I would consider both of those high level items, with the former being a gateway into higher level crafts. I know many people who are 2* crafters in every trade that didn't feel the RNG/price of getting higher was worth what they had to do to get there. Shards is only a small piece of that puzzle, but it's a piece nonetheless.

And what, making it a little less expensive to rank up your crafter by reducing the cost of the stupid lvl 1 items that you need enmasse is a bad thing?

I think it would only have a positive effect on the game.

Cluster > Crystal is just a matter of completeness, it's really not that needed because the crystals are already very valuable on their own.
Crystal > Shard would be VERY welcome because crystals just aren't that valuable right now, this gives them a purpose while tamping down on silly level 1 items getting too out of control in terms of price.

I, personally, would be very happy with a 3:1 ratio when converting from Clusters > Crystals > Shards. Keeps the materials prices balanced against each other without completely destroying the market.

Alternatively, increase the output (maybe 5:1), but require some kind of catalyst to break the cluster/crystal down so that the conversion isn't free.

[Nicobo]

Thanks all for telling me your desired ratio. I agree the ratio is reasonable.
So maybe the reason not having this is just as simple as below words, and cluster yield is going to be increased later. ^^;

//quote
in the future if there are requests to increase the cluster yield, being able to break these down into shards would overflow the market, and as a result it becomes much easier to use clusters, but the prices of shards would drop.
//enquote

[JayCommon]

And what, making it a little less expensive to rank up your crafter by reducing the cost of the stupid lvl 1 items that you need enmasse is a bad thing?

That was never stated, or implied throughout anything I wrote so I would appreciate you not grasping intent out of thin air and applying it to my paragraph. The small snip of a quote I referenced in my post is the absolute only thing I was referring to. Shards are used in some high level crafts. Period. End of story. No "anti-shard conversion" agenda here....

Personally I would love to be able to break down the different levels of energy, but that is irrelevant to why I posted what I did. The person asked a question and I answered it.