Good idea to have mining/botany retainers while working on my first 50?

[tocsin]

my retainers currently are 60 shards in 40mins for that reason i changed all 4 of my retainers to miner/botanist (240 shards/40mins) lol just to help with shards while im leveling crafters lol so more or less at best output atm then?

most likely.

However, just as a tip, you probably want one of the four to be a battle class. There are a lot of things that only battle classes can get (primal weapons, lw skins), and 60 shards/hr extra output isn't worth losing out on those items.