Deliberate ephemeral node behavior?

[TechnoTechie]

For normal 2.x nodes, touching (not gathering from, just opening the window) three different nodes in a group of four causes the first of those three to respawn. This lets you run between three nodes, gathering nothing, until a map (or other hidden item) spawns. When the node respawns, its position is re-randomized among the possible locations it can appear (the minor variations), hidden items are rerolled, the node returns to 100% health, and it's just like the node was depleted and came back.

This part is correct but ...

For normal 3.x nodes, they work the same, but it seems like you have to touch five to trigger the respawn. I dunno, generally running between all six is just as fast as a group of four would be due to how they're spread out in a triangle, so I just do that. When a 3.x normal node respawns, the node bonus also re-randomizes (2.x nodes all have fixed bonuses based on which of the four nodes it is).

The new heavensward nodes work in pairs; there are 3 pairs to any area, and you only have to touch one of each pair to cycle nodes. Over time, you may come to figure out which nodes are actually in the pair as it may not be intuitive at first (for nodes like the birch trees in Sea of Clouds in which three of the node spawn locations may seem ambiguous).

For ephemeral 3.x nodes, they work as if they were 2.x nodes attached to the 3.x node group. If you touch three nodes (including the ephemeral), the node respawns. Since ephemerals have exactly one position they can appear in (there is zero variation), it's hard to tell if the node respawns or not when touching three other nodes in the node group, but if you do touch it and then two others, it definitely respawns.

Using this information about pairs, you can simply touch one node of two separate pairs to respawn ephemeral nodes.