Hi, I cant even tell you how wrong you are
lets examine your reasoning here:
Aion is a grinder mmo > correct, however every part of a game has different uses. Stigma Shards are in this patch as a so called money sink, some way of extracting currency from the market, similar to entchantstones, scrolls, pots, manastones.
These Money sinks are meant to be ballanced. All moneysinks in this game are aimed at the broadest possible playerbase and meant to effect mostly the endgame players.
If money sinks affect certain classes more than others, thats a bad thing. If money sinks themselves go out of proportion thats also a bad thing. And retail ALSO REALIZED THIS. Its the difference between programming a money sink and managing it. If you realize as a product owner, that mechanics don't work as intended on your specific deploy, you have to act on it.
For Aion on retail, as rulai said, the shards where meant as a money sink but NEVER as a major investment since it would slow the progress of certain classes too much and dissadvantage only those who play the game as intended. Thats why after the market reacted to the bot banns they had to introduce them via the shop mechanic to NOT END UP LIKE THIS SERVER IS CURRENTLY!
Thats also the reason the system was removed. And if you check the Kinah prices for Stigma change in 4.8+ you can easily figure out what kind of expense stigma shards where originally meant to be. Enough to make you think about switching but not enough to make a cleric go on heal stigmas for a week cause he can't waste 20kk on switching for arena.
ANYONE who knows anything about how these games are made and what mechanics interact knows this so please stop talking about "you can just farm" "its meant like this"... its bullshit. its a broken system and even EA and GF knew this.
Take an average day of Aion, if people go to instances and do pvp on a normal shedule (arena times, jmr, kbf,t dred) the daily stuff changes between pve and pvp content easily 3-5 times each day, thats 100kk if you really wanna play the game as intended by the retail devs.... so yea, just go farm 24h in order to play 1 day proper on cleric ... gg...