PvP has been in decline for too long and why you should care

Before you rush to the downvote button like all PvP posts on this subreddit, just take the time to read this or just don't do anything, it needs exposure.I'm maybe not the best PvP player and I can't speak for everyone but I feel like it's a common feeling shared by many in the PvP community.PvP has been a major part of World of Warcraft in its history, it has been and still is to some extent a great display of someone’s skill at the game. I remember watching montage, streams of high rated players having fun and just simply enjoying the game. It was fun for me too as a noob, I could just log on any characters, do duels with friends, queue up, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I can still somewhat do that nowadays, but it is way harder and way less enjoyable. For example, if Billy who has never played PvP watches Pikaboo do 1v2s, it is entertaining and inspiring, he knows this rogue is good, he just outplayed them. So, Billy queues a skirmish on his rogue with average gear and he gets a standard dps healer matchup with a dh in the opposing team and gets obliterated. He never does arena again. Now what happened? Billy didn’t have any corruptions and versatility; Billy didn’t farm 40 visions full clear. Billy is sad and now just plays CoD with his friends.Over the years, the PvP community has been in decline, with many players leaving because Blizzard isn’t giving it much love. It can be seen through the numerous content creators or high rated players leaving, the number of players participating (I sometimes wait 2 hours or more to queue a single 3v3 match at 2k mmr) or the general perception of PvP in the broader community of WoW itself (often seen as just a mini-game or “dead” content) creating a not so pleasing environment and snowballing into even fewer players participating.Now how did we get here? Gearing, lack of changes and others.Let’s be clear here, gearing for PvPers hasn’t been great since WoD. In Legion, we had templates which were great in a way because everyone could just log on and play but we lacked freedom in itemization. In BfA, oh boy, we actually can’t gear up by doing PvP only, it is impossible. While PvErs complain about Conflict and Strife, we must do PvE all day everyday just to get average then have to farm forever assaults and visions to farm corruption.By the time you read this, you’re maybe going to ask why I’m complaining since they are adding vendors for Shadowlands. Well, they just recycled the conquest bar into a vendor and called it a day. Currently, it is impossible to get the right items with the right stats, there just aren’t enough variations of items to get geared with PvP.I’m not against doing a bit of PvE, getting maybe a legendary, 1 or 2 items is fine like trinkets (though they are a bit too overtuned) or 2 pieces of a tier set probably coming in the second raid but not being able to gear with my content is bad, anyone from the PvP community can agree on this.To solve this problem, we need all variations on the vendor. In a perfect world, I think PvP gear should be better than PvE gear in PvP (like WoD if I remember correctly or just add some sort of PvP power) with maybe a few exceptions but that’s it.PvP should be mainly skill based, not who has better gear. It must be accessible; you shouldn’t need tons and tons of hours gearing to step into rated arena.Putting gearing aside, we still have problems, the lack of changes. I’m going to give a couple of examples: you probably saw a screenshot on your discord or a post on reddit complaining about Destro Locks, well they got nerfed months after and it wasn’t significant; a dampening slow meta that no one likes, we wait months; 40% of total damage with Gushing Wounds, yeah let’s not fix anything; the Boralus arena never loads, let’s hope it gets fixed next expansion; etc. While some changes are great, we need more and at the right time, especially when a lot of people are complaining. It is very frustrating and damaging the game for no real reason.We can also consider gameplay even though it’s not as easy to fix compared to the other points. It is known that combat has slowed over the years, amplified with the GCD changes and I think many people will agree with me on this. In my opinion it lowers the skill ceiling players could reach by suppressing the reactivity component. I feel like decision making is the same, one is just slower. Someone less knowledgeable will try to press every spell no matter what, even if GCD changes are reverted, he’s still making the wrong decision either way because he’s wasting his big CDs he won’t have for later scenarios during an encounter or arena match. Using everything is also way more fun and stacking CDs will always happen, GCD is just slowing an inevitable process.Blizzard needs to listen to feedback, they can even do PvP only interviews with rank 1 players (https://twitter.com/ElliottVenczel/status/1284196765139230720) for example, it won’t take much time and would help starting a discussion with the right people.Taking the right decisions for PvP could give WoW a real breath of fresh air, it is a good, quick, fun form of content and is satisfying from a progression standpoint.Lastly, PvP is in my opinion the easiest and most entertaining type of competition in WoW because it’s relatable. It’s shared across all competitive games, it’s the core of esport, it should never be neglected.Thanks for reading.I'm sorry if this was poorly written, I'm not a native speaker.