Splat 30 innocent small things, then you are already a good way to daily killing. Go gather meanwhile. That's 3. FInd some events for the 4th. Go to Orr and buy a jewel box. Not hard. I like the new dailies.
As said, a perfect salvage kit would be the solution. It would probably cause more players to salvage off useful runes they dont need and sell, thus increasing the availability of them.
What about having the laurel vendors selling the kits? or karma merchant?
Or even make them craftable, so you can use your crafting skills for some more useful stuff:)
I happen to be on Ring of fire server and yesterday afternoon there were enough people to kill Claw of Jormag smoothly.
And yes, it is no surprise that some players quit for various reasons, but new ones are also joining.
As i said in another thread, if I had a gold coin for every time someone declared the game dead I could go buy a bucketload of legendaries now.
But that does not make the game any more dead. I still feel it is alive. Maybe not exactly booming, but very far from dead.