Instead of assuming incompetence, this has been going on for too long already. One expansion, fine. But 3 expansions in a row? That shows there’s clear intent.
So as for that intent, you’ve gotta look at the effects. And the effects are twofold:
- PvPers are basically arm-twisted to PvE for their gear, because of the huge differences in reward system efficacy.
- PvP as a whole is made easier. Referring to both the trimming down of gameplay punishments (meaning you can’t really “choose wrong” like in the past, just less good) and a massive overflow of passives which has been a thing creeping up since Cata. This, with the differences in gear reward designs, leads to favoring PvEers much more than the ones only sticking to PvP.
So their intent seems very much to intentionally push PvE as the frontline for core gameplay, while rated PvP ends up as a stress relief with much less significance than it used to have, for those very same PvEers.
inb4 people say “Legion was different”, Legion was the start of the removal of PvP vendors, the templates would still benefit PvEers more than PvPers (not as much as in BFA, but still much more than WoD and earlier), and artifact traits went through some changes here and there but overall it went faster for PvEers than for PvPers most of the time.
The artifact relics also were much easier to acquire, and with a higher maximum ilvl, in PvE than in PvP.
And no, templates did not make ilvl meaningless. It just reduced the effectiveness of ilvl differences by a factor of 10, but at the same time they sped up the ilvl progression by more than double. ilvl mattered much more to some than for others, with CCers being viable with the lowest amount.