With all the nerfs for AOE grinding loot now in place, there really is absolutely no way for a player to earn loot in game while soloing. You can't have a game that is only playable in instances. There are people that enjoy an hour or two a day just hunting gems... or there were.
My personal experience:
1 hour AOE grinding with no loot pots gives 0-1 glimmering gem which has about a 50% chance of having no buyers (worthless gem) in game, and 1-2 green NPC loot items. Repair fee is around 20g on level 45 gear, yet the items NPC for about 12g. Therefore, you are in the red 8g and an hour wasted.
1 hour AOE grinding with 1 loot booster that cost 80ep netted me 1 glimmering ruby and 1 unsellable gem and 3 green drops. Repair fee was about 20g and the NPC items sold for 16g. If I spammed chat for 4 hours I could sell the ruby for maybe 90g, so I am in the red 74g for that run, along with an hour wasted.
What kind of game punishes players for playing? Over both methods I made more money and saved an hour by not playing at all! Why is the only way to make money and find glimmering gems require a team of 5 to do? Why punish players that want a bit of solo game time?
Don't even say that my DPS is the issue. My DPS is 1.5k and I have 3 AOE skills.
This is not a rant. You guys nerfed the AOE areas and drop rates so much that it's entirely pointless to try. You can't have any shred of an illusion of variety in the game if you don't give players an option to choose how and where they acquire their gems and money.
Current list of totally pointless endeavors:
TOC
Arena
PvP
WB
Trappers
Solo loot farming
ASV/RG (for prophets (sapphires are a joke))
Again, not a rant. I simply want the game I spent money on to be more than 2 instances in it's entirety.