In the grand scheme of things that’s practically a lie.
I did the math for BfA S1 and it turned out that Gladiator was devalued by 282 rating at that time. (I.e. 0.5%, the old cutoff, was ~2682 rating).
Using the same math in BfA S4 currently (using the cutoffs from the Blizzard ladder page and the ladder from arenamate):
- Gladiator is at ~1.19%, a whole ~0.69% easier to attain than before BfA.*
- Gladiator is devalued by ~159 rating (i.e. 0.5%, the old cutoff, is at ~2559 rating)
- The current population is 285K in EU
- “Old” Duelist (3%) is at rank ~8550 which in my guesstimate is somewhere between 2K-1.8K rating.
*It will rise until the end of season, but it would be even higher at the end of the season if there was an actual incentive to push rating around the 0.5% cutoff rating at the end of the season (which there isn’t today).