Lock gear behind rating. It will be controversial, but for many players, we don’t care about cosmetics, only increasing the strength of our character with better gear.
I have no reason to push rating because there are no gear upgrades I can get.
It will force good players to push to the top of the ladder to get the best PVP gear, which helps lower-rated people not face multi-r1 at 2k rating.
Simple fix to kill pvp once and for all
Not really. It just has to be smart.
Make it so that each rating threshold allows you to upgrade the ilvl of your PvP in open world content.
That way all PvP players compete on an equal footing, but your progress in PvP allows you to have stronger gear outside of PvP.
why tho? it was like that till wotlk atleast. PvP was definitely not dead in tbc and wotlk 
Op is actualy right…
Offering equal gear to anyone only infest game with easy to play metas, and additional problems he described.
If you ask me gear shoud be locked behind ratting but strentght of that gear shoud have like 5% difference in power, which means gear can gief you edge but you still gonna lose a game if you not play well or get outplayed.
WoW is MMO its all about idea of building and developing your character, what you can build or work for when anyone has the same?
Went horrible the second time around
https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/yqa29b/currently_only_the_top_2_of_arena_players_meet/
The casual player base, which built the foundation of the ladder would just opt out. There is a reason why they changed it. And we have the current system now for around 15 years
Playing a paladin should come with a social worker that forbids you from posting on the forums.
You behave more like a paladin than you realize. Maybe it’s your true calling. 
SL was the best pvp iteration by many players, me included
You upgraded conq gear with honor every 100-150 rating as I can remember
It was the best time since eternity, BGs actually mattered, it was fun to play them with PURPOSE
I still want this system back, but sadly casuals cried too hard that they (for some reason in their head) cant get bis pvp gear just for participation
All the great times in wow history if we discuss pvp were tied to gear disbalance, some pve abuse, legendaries
Mains matter, it takes time to reroll, arena games were not flat pvp meta specs
Good times, Blizz, cmon
Edit: Sl wasn’t good in terms of covenants and leveling this mess, but that’s another story, I’ve been talking only about pvp gearing
No.
I really came outta retirement to say I have no intention of ever going back to Shadowlands gearing ever again. I like my alts, and if I can’t play them, then I am AFK 95% of the season.
Can’t play them if game is dead anyway no? 
I just heal so I get instant Qs. It’s a vibe, I’ve healed like 80% of this forum. Thinking about y’all.
Fair, I respect your opinion. I just wanted to shed light on players like me, who don’t care about pushing rating for cosmetic rewards only.
We missed you bro!
Oh I soooo can’t wait to wreck undergeared plebs while carrying people like in shadowlands
Only way to do it without killing PVP completely would be some kind of rank protection. Like, every time you reach a rating that allows gear upgrades, you cannot drop below that rating anymore, and queue with or against anyone below that rating.
But we probably don’t have enough PVP players anymore for such a system to work.
Might be a controversial take, but I agree. The fundamentals of SL gearing were perfect and lead a lot of PvE players to queue as well.
Most don’t remember it fondly, because Blizzard overdid it with the daily chores. Maxing out ones pact + farming high ilvl conduits and legendaries (huge amounts of gold + Thorgast) + locking the best PvP gear behind rating burned players out.
There was also a lot of crying from players who couldn’t reach their rating goals, allegedely because of gear disadvantages. But we all know that a few item lvls are the last thing holding one back from reaching 1.8k or 2.1k.
You didn’t read what I said.
PvP ilvl would remain the same, upgrading your gear would only work in open world content.