/em puts on player hat (please allow me to just this once)
I think one thing that will help is to change this mentality and NOT teach it to new players.
Personally, when I play my dragon (who is between adult and ancient levels, so perhaps in a "sweet spot" level wise, I don't know), I rarely use Gold Rage and Silver Strike, and frankly have never used Shield of Gold at all.
I do not rely on these abilities for day to day hunting. I go for mobs in single or double pulls that range anywhere within my current "trophy" range (meaning my level up to 4 higher than me). I use hoard abilities when I can to save my backside, but by no means every combat.
If a combat is going south on me, I'll fly up and get out of it. Might seem cheap to some, but I consider it tactics. Using this method, last night I gained half a levels worth of experience in about 3 hours of game play (if I remember how long I was online, that is).
So while the suggestions for what to fight are great, I think one of the issues is that people teach young dragons to rely on hoard abilities too much. Is it a valid play style? Absolutely. Nothing stopping someone from playing this way. But it also does not HAVE to be the only way of doing things, and I think it is a disservice to growing dragons to teach them that it is the only way, because it most assuredly is not.
/em takes player hat back off and goes back to fixing things