exactly how i felt when...

we did dark shade on v16. all four were vr 16 players we got less out of the gold chest than you can get from a vet 3 undead!

i also have not gotten a single set of shoulders out of a chest since the update. I used to get them every other run sometimes even more often.

Um, what you get out of the gold chest has nothing to do with what dungeon you did or what level you did the dungeon at. The level you get out of the gold chest is tied to what level you are at when you use the gold key (which is why many people save up their gold keys and use them only when they're at max level and when there's a set of monster shoulders that they're looking for--once you have the shoulders that you seek, you might as well save your keys for the next major content update when they add more items and/or levels).

I.e., it doesn't matter one bit if you got your gold key from VR16 VCoA or if you got it from VR1 Elden Hollow.

And, for me, I usually get monster shoulders one our of every two or three gold keys. The rest is decon loot. Which is still quite valuable, considering that Rubedite is worth about 500-600g and the grain solvent that you might get out of deconning a purple is worth 600-900g.