It’s safe to say that this most recent patch has massively hurt PVP. Anomalus is probably the strongest pet their has ever been. Hermit Crab, Clutch Sister, Fas and Wrymy only serve to push a very small amount of viable top tier pet options.
The lack of changes to what is now an old stale system only serve to push interested players away.
Metas last years and Dev mistakes take expansions to fix, there’s no fun in facing 4 or 5 pets in every game. In this current meta you cannot run a "fun or themed team and expect to do even OK. They can fix abilities really fast when they want like the Lift-off rez bug I discovered a couple of days after rez was released.
There will always be meta pets it’s part of modern gaming however the power level between the best and the average pet should be close enough that you at least have a chance with average pets.
The 2 recent changes the Brawler achievement and the newer players being more likely to queue into each other do not work. Trying to complete the Brawler achievement now for a new player would put anyone off from ever participating in the queue again. Interestingly the Brawler achievement can be fixed so easily by just having one day a week as family only teams. There aren’t enough players in each battlegroup to make the new players meeting each other remotely viable.
Last month I suggested the fixes required to mix up the meta for at least a few months most were just changing numbers hardly completely rewriting mechanics.
Sadly I don’t expect any positive changes to the meta and it will be at least 10.0 before anomalus etc are even possibly changed.