Well, you can all thank me, because the 17,000 is now at least 17,001. I went up to gold1 in 3v3 for the missions, it took me forever, but i did it. and the week after, i decided that gold1 was stupid. You can't even farm this mode easily more than 2-3 days a week, after which, everyone is so scared to go down they all put their defenses back up by Wednesday. Which means that to farm all your keys every day takes way too long.
So I decided on purpose to go all the way back to silver2. Screw the extra sacred shard. Spending 1-2 hours each day to farm a single shard each month, WASTE OF TIME.
So there, one extra spot in gold because i let mine go. You're welcome!