Guild Wars 2

Forgive me if this is posted elsewhere – I’ve been looking for something on this and haven’t come across any threads yet.

Prior to HoT, I did a lot of SW farming for gold – both event maps and chest farms. Since HoT dropped, I noticed some changes in the map. Namely, there seems to be half as many bandit chests in the map, sw shovel drops have been nerfed significantly (I only got 2 in a recent one hour run), and it seems you need to see the majority of events through to conclusion in order to receive credit rather than tagging and running.

So, my first question – are these experiences limited to me or has anyone else come across them? I thought I read something on the shovels before, but I wanted to confirm.

Second question – is SW still worth it for gold grinding? I like the map and the flow of events, but I’ve been hurting for gold since HoT dropped because of the mentioned nerfs. I know dungeons got their rewards moved to fractals and fractals are now gated behind masteries, so I’m looking back at SW or world bosses for gold grinding.

Thoughts?