Picking up 2 shards/day instead of 20 shards/day might be worth it, in certain cases, but only when the remaining GW/Arena characters are worth 10x less to me than the shards I'm buying.
To put it bluntly: the unpredictability of the availability of those shards, makes them worth less. If I pick up 2 shards/day of a toon I want, I can have that toon in (at most) 40 days even if I can't get their shards anywhere else.
If you want me to turn in shards I earned in GW (or somewhere else) for ShardShop currency that will sit around and maybe get me 6 shards I want over the course of an entire month (or even less, sometimes, with Vader) ...then I might be waiting for that toon for, I kid you not, the math does not lie, 13 months.
The sporadic nature of the shards available make them far less valuable. A dependable supply is more valuable.
Cetaceans opening redundant Chromiums have literally no place to put those shards, so they might as well go to the ShardShop.
For anyone else, there is no utility without greater reliability.
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I facepalm every time I see something like Jedi Consular or Talia in the shop.